




Copyright N° _ 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr 





. 










































— ' 

' 

* 




















- 

I • 








- 





















IB it) 





















































, . 

' 

, 

- 


' 1 ■ 




> ■■ ■',. ’ 

- 

* ’ 


- 

. " < : , * 

■ 

i - • - ■ 


■ 













.* 









- 


\ 


























\ < 

( ■ ' . , 









TWO SISTERS 
















Two Sisters 


AND 


□; 


A CONFESSION 


BY 


PAUL BOURGET 


/> 


Translated by 

Winnie Barber Millard 


NEW YORK: 

H. W. KIMBER, Publisher 
286 FIFTH AVENUE 


□ 





c<\ 


Copyright, 1912 
BY 

H. W. KIMBER 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. On the Platform of the Station 1 

II. A Comic Opera Star and a Hero of a 

Romance 20 

III. To Another’s Account 47 

IV. A Soldier’s Heart 76 

Y. Four Months Later.. 99 

VI. Jealousy Is Contagious 125 

VII. Two Noble Hearts 160 

VIII. The Heroic Lie 191 

IX. Conclusive Remarks 211 

A Confession 219 





' 















TWO SISTERS 


CHAPTER ONE. 

ON THE PLATFORM OF THE STATION. 

The express train which comes from Coire and 
stops at Ragatz at about six o’clock in the even- 
ing was twenty-five minutes late, a circum- 
stance not at all regretted by two sisters who 
were walking back and forth on the platform 
of the little station. For it was the first time 
during the two weeks which Mme, de M6ris, the 
elder, had been spending with her sister, Mme. 
Li^baut (whose young daughter Charlotte was 
taking the treatment at the Springs) that they 
had conversed with any real intimacy. Perhaps 
it was now the sentiment which comes at parting 
that was softening their hearts, or it may be that 
they sensed the poetical country around them 
which seemed to diffuse itself and to hold them 
in a gentle but irresistible fascination. 

This verdant and extensive valley of Ragatz, 
where the young Rhine runs so swift and so cold 
among the many poplar trees, lay stretched out 
before them in a peaceful abandonment. Around 
them were the sublime Alps, standing forth like 


2 


Two Sisters 


bulwarks of tbe valley to surround and protect 
the delightful little village, the fresh fields, and 
clusters of old trees from the rough outside 
world. The delicate line of the Faulknis chain 
standing out with its zig-zag edges of a violet 
color against the light of the setting sun might 
well raise one to the truth that there is a great 
sense of nobility derived from these heights of 
mountains. The wild gorge opposite which leads 
to Pfafers sinks just here into an enormous 
rocky chasm, and around the ruin of Warten- 
stein as it crumbles away on the bold point of a 
peak there ever dwells that halo of romance. 

It had been a hot August day, but just now a 
light wind was blowing, laden with the freshness 
of the glaciers over which it had passed before 
descending into the valley. Thus not a single 
discord broke the sweet charm of this hour. 

At the station scarcely a dozen passengers 
were awaiting, like themselves, the belated train, 
for it was at a time of year when the express re- 
turns back to Paris almost empty. The porters 
Were leaning against the outgoing trunks with a 
stolidity entirely Helvetian, and in the general 
silence of things the most distinct sound which 
came to the ears of these two French women was 
the light rhythm of their own feet as they passed 


Two Sisters 


3 


from the graveled part of the ground on to the 
hard concrete. The accord of their footsteps told 
of the ease and abandon with which they were 
conversing. Graceful, strikingly alike in outline 
and in features, they made a remarkable couple 
whom every one about them was drawn to look 
at. Although Agathe was the elder by one year 
(she being thirty and Madeleine twenty-nine), 
this difference, insignificant enough, was not at 
all recognizable, so that they gave the impression 
at first of being twins, and disconcerted many 
persons who saw them rarely or one in the ab- 
sence of the other. The hair of both was blond 
with chestnut tints. They had the same blue 
eyes of a transparent delicacy suggestive of the 
fragile petals of certain flowers. The nose was 
fine; the line of cheek and the curve of the full 
arched brows were noble. The same dimpled 
chin, a pleasing mouth with an irregularity that 
was charming, behind which shone teeth, a little 
large perhaps, but well arranged, completed the 
category of their resemblances. 

On studying them, however, this sort of illu- 
sion and magic spell which it cast as to their 
almost complete identity disappeared. Differ- 
ences entirely physical might be noticed. The 
elder was, perhaps, an inch or two shorter than 


4 


Two Sisters 


Madeleine, while the latter had a more luxuriant 
growth of hair, a somewhat stouter figure, and a 
face which was slightly more plump. 

To study them still more was to discover a 
more essential difference, so radical, in fact, 
that, once caught, the seeming identities of these 
two creatures brought out that difference in an 
astonishing degree. One might imagine that two 
diametrically opposite personalities lived, felt 
and thought in these two so similar bodies. A 
tormented soul full of complications and discon- 
tent looked out from the eyes of Agathe, eyes 
that were inclined to scrutinize to the degree 
that Madeleine’s were inclined to open the wider 
with a caressing and a contagious animation. A 
certain defiance of Nature easier to feel than to 
define contracted the smile of Agathe, while the 
other sister, on the other hand, with a manner 
that was tolerant and ingratiating, created all 
around her an atmosphere of refined good 1 nature. 
Indeed, she possessed the genius of her sex, for 
she was one of those whose sole presence radiates 
a sweetness for which one is tempted to thank 
them. 

Their manner of dressing revealed no less 
clearly the difference of their characters. Both 
were in the elegant attire of prosperous Parisians 


Two Sisters 


5 


of to-day. Just a few words will suffice to sum 
up their social history. (We all have one in 
these times of rapid ascent up the social ladder 
and this history governs frequently the destiny 
of the heart, however hidden and apparently out- 
side the play of events may be to our inmost 
consciousness. ) Agathe and Madeleine were the 
Hennequin young ladies of the house of Henne- 
quin, known ten years ago as one of the largest 
shops for ribbons and gauzes in the rue des 
Jeuneurs. Having lost their parents when very 
young, the considerable dowry which was theirs 
permitted them to make whatever marriage they 
chose. Agathe had married a Monsieur de Meris, 
titled indeed but ruined, who, however, just 
previous to his death inherited enough from his 
uncle so that she was left a widow without chil- 
dren, and twenty thousand francs income. Ma- 
deleine had married more simply and into the 
middle class. She had taken a physician whose 
daily increasing practice assured him a brilliant 
future. These figures will suggest to those who 
know Paris just what degree of elegance and 
costliness marked the two sisters’ attire as they 
waited on the platform of the station. Dress to- 
day is like a livery which shows up the size of 
one’s income. Only if the black mohair dress 


6 


Two Sisters 


and black broadcloth cloak with white passe- 
menterie trimming which Agathe wore as travel- 
ing costume came from the same shop and was of 
the same elegance as Madeleine’s costume of 
white serge, it had the means of making its 
wearer appear stiff and affected as if in harness 
while the other was all grace and suppleness. 
Madame de Mdris’ jewels of half-mourning, a 
chain of platinum decorated w r ith black pearls, 
and her black enameled brooches set with dia- 
monds, emphasized a something of the pretenti- 
ous which enveloped her whole person, while 
Madeleine’s lack of jewelry, except for the large 
pins which pierced her flowered hat, and the 
chain bracelet in which was set her watch gave 
an impression of singular simplicity. From time 
to time while talking with the traveler whom she 
had accompanied to the train (she herself was 
not leaving Ragatz) she would glance at this 
watch on her wrist with a movement that bespoke 
uneasiness, not that she felt any impatience to 
see the locomotive emerge from the tunnel below 
them, but because on the contrary she appre- 
hended its arrival all too soon. 

The conversation which had been taking place 
during the last few minutes was of so rare an 
occurrence that it happened to be the very first 


Ttvo Sisters 


7 


since Agathe’s arrival at the Spa two weeks 
before. The singularity of relationship between 
the two sisters could not be attributed to the 
spontaneous nature of Madeleine; the elder was 
alone responsible through certain faults of char- 
acter for which idioms are lacking, so truly do 
they pertain to the deepest part of one’s being. 
Agathe displeased while Madeleine pleased by 
that indefinable combination of things that one 
calls personality. She felt it; she had always 
felt it. A persistent impression of some secret 
discord between herself and Life had produced 
in her a kind of irritability which quickly ends 
in what an Anglo-Saxon names “moral dyspep- 
sia.” Alais ! in spite of the apparent success of her 
ambitions she had gained but little contentment 
and bore badly the greater tranquility which 
she knew to have permeated the younger’s life. 
Not that she envied her, for she had too much 
nobility under her harsh exterior to permit such 
a sentiment in her heart. But she suffered from 
the realization that such was the case, and from 
the contrast of certain personal traits of Made- 
leine’s and shortcomings of her own. 

She disdained that easy good nature of Ma- 
deleine’s in which she could not but see a little 
vulgarity, although nothing could be less so, and 


8 


Two Sisters 


she reproached her for that simple joy in living 
in which she was not far from discerning an 
egoism, which was again altogether unjust. She 
hated her success in society which she would 
have attributed to a little coquetry. But of 
what use is it to analyze delicate relations which 
it suffices merely to suggest? The conversation 
to which this conversation serves as prologue 
will bring out these anomalies with a clearness 
with which no preliminary commentary would 
compare. 

Their conversation had opened with an im- 
pulsive remark made by Madeleine. She had 
been thinking aloud, so to speak, about her 
sister’s journey which was to be made straight 
to Normandy with barely a stopover at Paris. 
There in Normandy she was to visit a friend for 
whom Madeleine had a certain dislike. 

“I am sorry not to keep you here for two 
reasons,” she said, “first, because I want you here 
for company with me, being a little worried 
about Charlotte.” This allusion to her daughter 
for whose health she had come to the Spa 
brought a sad light into her eyes, “but more 
than anything else,” she went on, “because I 
should like to keep you from going to the 
Fugr^s.” 


Two Sisters 


9 


“I am not in the habit of neglecting my friends 
when they are in trouble. If you reflect a mo- 
ment you will confess that you would not like me 
to,” Agathe responded in a tone that told plainly 
that the antipathy of the other for the Fugr6 
family had not escaped her. Ordinarily in such 
cases where a word risked opening a discussion 
between them, Mme. Liebaut kept silence. This 
Fugre allusion suggested a recent trouble which 
Madeleine and her husband had had with one of 
his comrades, a man who had recklessly risked 
his own and wife’s and children’s fortunes on the 
stock exchange. He had become ruined, and be- 
cause indignantly reproached by the physician 
before the catastrophe, had refused on account 
of self-love and wounded pride to effect a recon- 
ciliation afterwards. Mme. de M6ris had blamed 
her brother-in-law for his meddling and awk- 
ward action. Madeleine now recalled her sister’s 
attitude of blame which at the time had hurt 
her, but feeling a certain anxiety for her future, 
and desiring to help her as much as possible be- 
fore her departure, she ventured to respond, “If 
Clotilde is unhappy, you will own, I hope, that it 
is her own fault.” And she tossed slightly her 
head. “Her husband’s wrong-doing reduces itself 
to caring too much for his estates, his horses, 


10 


Two Sisters 


and his hunting, and not enough for Paris, to 
suit her !” 

“You know as well as I do how it is,” returned 
the elder, in an impatient tone. “He is meanly 
jealous of her. He has devised this means of 
sequestering her at the age of twenty-five, when 
a young woman has the right to growth, cer- 
tainly when she is honorable like Clotilde. It is 
abominable !” 

“Why, then, did she let him become jealous?” 
asked Madeleine. “It is a simple enough thing 
to prevent the malady, for it is one. Why, when 
she discovered it getting the best of him, did she 
not yield to Fugrd on all the points that irritated 
him? Then she would have all the right on her 
side and he all the wrong.” But she corrected 
the impression she was making so as to prevent 
a protestation from her sister by adding, “I 
should none the less dread your visit with them. 
For one cause or another the Fugrds are a bad 
lot, and it cannot be in their society that you 
would entertain the idea of marrying again.” 

“Of marrying again?” repeated Agathe 
quickly, with one of those expressive smiles 
which rendered her face suddenly so different 
from the other’s. A slight trembling agitated her 
lips, which contracted more on the right side, an 


Two Sisters 


11 


unevenness which would have disfigured very 
much a physiognomy less lovely than her own. 
“Then you have not yet given up that idea?” she 
continued. “You think that I did not have 
enough from my first experience?” 

“I think that you draw from a particular case 
general conclusions which are not just,” Ma- 
deleine responded tenderly. “You had bad luck 
the first time, which ought to be a motive for 
trying for better the second. You were very 
young when you married Kaoul ; you were taken 
by his manners and elegance. It was very 
natural also that you were attracted by the world 
into which he introduced you.” 

“Don’t hesitate to say that I married through 
vanity, since you and your husband have always 
thought so,” said Agathe. 

“We have never thought that,” replied Mme. 
Lidbaut with warmth. “There is not the slightest 
connection between this mean sentiment and that 
ingenuous attraction which high society exercises 
over a girl of nineteen when she is as pretty and 
bright and as suited to become a grande dame as 
were you. What I wish to say is, that now you 
are permitted to make your life again and that 
you ought to do it.” She emphasized the last. 
“It is my favorite maxim, you know, that one 


12 


Two Sisters 


ought to desire to live! For a woman of 
thirty years, beautiful and intelligent, and with 
as much feeling as you, it is surely not living to 
have nothing or no one to truly love. For a 
woman to be neither wife nor mother, ah! it is 
a great pity! You are my darling sister, and I 
can not let you have this destiny.” 

“I thank you for your good intentions,” replied 
Mme. de Meris, with the same irony. Then she 
said in all earnestness, “You have never alto- 
gether understood me, my poor Madeleine. ‘ Don’t 
suppose I am angry. But this favorite maxim of 
yours is according to your own particular taste. 
It is your character. You would have married 
Raoul and would have found the means of being 
happy — I see that as clearly as if it were really 
the case!” and she accompanied her banter with 
a little dry laugh. “His brutalities would have 
been interpreted by you as naturalness. He 
would have deceived you as he did me, and you 
would have said to yourself that it was your own 
fault, as you now say it of Clotilde. My dear 
sister, do you wish me to point out the thing 
which separates us, and which always will sep- 
arate us? It’s this: you have always accepted 
and always will accept your life whatever it hap- 
pens to be. As for me, I desired to use choice 


Two Sisters 


13 


with mine. I have not succeeded in it, but per- 
haps there is more nobility in certain misfor- 
tunes than in certain happiness. And then one 
can not make over one’s life. I shall not marry 
again for the sake of remarrying, bear that in 
mind once for all. I shall marry again, if I do 
so at all, when I believe that I have met some 
one whom I could truly and absolutely love. Be- 
lieve me, the quarrels of the household of Clo- 
tilde and Julien would not prevent me from mar- 
rying some one who took my fancy if I met him, 
and neither does your advice make me change 
my existence simply for the sake of changing it. 
This existence has its hours of cruel solitude, it 
is true. It has no hours of sweet memories to 
attach itself to, but it is my own, what I have 
chosen, and pride suffices me.” 

“You make yourself out stronger than you 
really are, fortunately,” replied the other. “If 
you really thought what you are saying you 
would be simply an embodiment of pride, the 
most conceited being imaginable, and you are not 
that. You are a thorough woman and full of 
tenderness! You deny this, but you cannot de- 
ceive your little sister who loves you. Commis- 
sion me only to search for him, this ‘some one’ 


14 


Two Sisters 


who would take possession of your heart, and I 
shall find him.” 

She had spoken these words in a tone of half 
fun and half emotion, habitual to beings of sensi- 
bility when they long to tame a heart they love 
and which they feel is hostile. The charm of her 
voice and her laughing glance while expressing 
this strange proposition held in check for a 
minute the latent ill-will of Mme. de Mdris. She 
began to smile and responding to her sister’s 
childish fancy replied, this time without a tinge 
of bitterness: 

“I have no objection to your searching, pro- 
vided that I am free to refuse.” 

“Do you realize that I am extremely serious in 
my offer,” the younger sister parried, “and that 
I am going to set about it the moment that I have 
your consent?” 

“You have it,” rejoined Agathe, in the same 
tone of affected fun; “but if it is among these 
rheumatics and neurasthenics of Eagatz ” 

“Anything may happen,” interrupted Mad- 
eleine; then, pointing to the outlines of the loco- 
motive at the end of the railroad track, “and at 
any time as this train just coming •” 

The express was emerging, in truth, from the 
tunneled bridge which is here constructed over 


Two Sisters 


15 


the Rhine, and the little station was in the mean- 
time rapidly changing its appearance. 

The travelers, more numerous now, were press- 
ing forward to the edge of the platform. The 
porters were manoeuvring with their heavy 
trucks of trunks. Mme. de Mdris’ maid had 
come promptly to the side of her mistress, carry- 
ing in one hand the traveling bag and in the 
other a bundle of shawls. The rumbling of the 
cars rolling along more and more softly before 
the final halt scarcely covered the clatter of 
voices which were calling above and around the 
heads of the two sisters, as they walked the 
length of the train on the watch for the number 
of the compartment reserved for Agathe. At last, 
when it was found and the traveler was installed 
among the innumerable objects with 1 which every 
woman who lives in this station of life is use- 
lessly and elegantly encumbered — cushions for 
the back, a small leather book-covering, smelling 
bottles, a tiny clock to measure time, and all the 
rest — she leaned for some moments on the open 
window of the door to exchange a last farewell 
with Madeleine. They made at that moment a 
picture of exquisite beauty as their faces so 
similar in feature were turned to each other, 
looking with eyes so alike and a smile so identical 


16 


Two Sisters 


in its charm. In spite of all kinds of complica- 
tions in mood and temperament on the part of 
the elder and repeated pardonings on the part of 
the younger, they cherished a deep affection for 
each other. Now an identical emotion possessed 
them which emphasized their likeness. The light 
of the sun, already very low, fell upon them, gild- 
ing with reflections which were still warm the 
glossiness of their pretty hair and the transpa- 
rency of the fresh complexions. This double 
and charming apparition was so uncommon that 
it would have provoked anywhere the curiosity 
of witnesses of this pretty farewell scene. In- 
deed, what pictures are lost in the last moment 
before a departure ! Agathe and Madeleine 
could fondly look and smile at each other with 
perfect liberty, as if they had not been in a public 
place exposed to indiscretions. All of a sudden, 
however, the smile was arrested on Agathe’s lips. 
Her eyes became strained, color mounted her 
cheeks, and almost at the same moment the same 
change of expression took place in Madeleine. 
Both had just discovered that they were being 
looked at fixedly by a stranger standing motion- 
less a few steps away. It was a man of about 
thirty years, himself of too unusual a physiog- 
nomy to be passed by unnoticed. He was rather 


Two Sisters 


17 


short, and dressed with a something of awk- 
wardness which distinguishes professional sol- 
diers whenever they don civilian garb. The 
extreme energy of his face, quite hallowed 
under the short beard, was as if veiled and 
immersed in a melancholy which was out of 
all accord both with his proud, imperious look 
and with the severe lines of his mouth. His 
eyes, which were very brown — almost black — 
literally glowed. His thinness and the bronze 
shade of his complexion bespoke an invalid 
condition which, however, had nothing in com- 
mon with the look of exhaustion that charac- 
terized most of the city people at Ragatz. His 
military bearing suggested the idea of some far- 
away campaign, and of enormous fatigues en- 
dured in a deadly climate. A letter which he 
carried showed that he was going to the mail-car, 
evidently having missed the hour of the post, 
until he was stopped by the pretty apparition of 
these two women. He had then stopped being 
thrown, as it were, into a contemplation of which 
he felt himself the impropriety, for he blushed 
on his part and continued on to the mail-car, 
walking swiftly without again turning in their 
direction. 


13 


Two Sisters 


In the meantime the younger was saying with 
some amusement to her sister : 

“You’ll confess that among these rheumatics 
and neurasthenics here at the Springs you meet 
with romantic figures as well.” 

“I suppose you mean gentlemen who lack good 
breeding,” Agathe responded. 

“Just because he looked at you when he be- 
lieved you were not looking at him?” asked 
Madeleine. “The way in which he blushed when 
we caught him proves that he has not the habit 
of such bad manners.” 

“Why do you pretend that it was I whom he 
was looking at?” asked Mme. de M6ris. “It was 
you.” 

“Me?” Mme. Li6baut laughingly replied. “It 
was certainly you. He could not see me.” 

“Grant then that it was both of us,” responded 
Agathe. “He is then twice ill-bred. Whatever 
you may say, Vodla tout!” Then, laughing out- 
right, she added, “You needn’t introduce to me 
this candidate wdth his jaundice look, for he 
wouldn’t have a chance. I have no faculty for 
professional nursing.” 

The train was beginning to move while she 
spoke these last words. She threw a kiss with 
the tip of her gloved hand to her sister, who for 


Two Sisters 


19 


a long time remained standing on the little de- 
serted platform looking after the trail of cars as 
they serpentined through the valley. 

“Poor Agathe!” she said to herself. “It is 
true that her life is bare and sad. She is some- 
times a little embittered, but when you think of 
what she has gone through, is it surprising? If 
I only could find for her this husband whom she 
pretends she doesn’t w ant ! . . . It is a strange 
thing, but one might almost believe that she is 
afraid to feel, though overflowing with feeling, 
and afraid to love, though quivering with ten- 
derness,, . . . Ah, my poor, my dear sister!” 


CHAPTER TWO. 


A COMIC OPERA STAR AND A HERO OF A ROMANCE. 

This anxiety about the future of her sister 
Madeleine had felt very frequently, and just as 
frequently she had had the impression that some 
secret jealousy was poisoning the other’s heart. 
Should it rightly be called jealousy? Was it 
possible that Agathe who had married delib- 
erately a man of title could be jealous of the 
younger in her union with a modest physician? 
Yet the vanity of a girl brought up in the midst 
of the merchant class who has had her dreams of 
social triumphs often abounds in contradictions. 
To really and truly disdain the destiny of an- 
other person does not prevent one from hating 
the success of that destiny. Madeleine felt this in 
her sister with her fine sensitiveness, and if her 
partial love for Agathe forbade her to give in to 
her flashes of intuition, she none the less suffered 
certain evidences of it. Without exception when- 
ever she talked most confidentially with Agathe 
she felt herself saddened and depressed. Such 
was now the case. A strange melancholy weighed 
20 


Two Sisters 


21 


down upon her while she was returning from the 
little station to her home in the twilight. 

She was living for the season in an out-of-the- 
way pavilion adjoining an annex of one of the 
hotels which are crowded together around the 
little park of the bathing establishment. Thanks 
to the relations of her husband with one of the 
physicians at Ragatz, she had there a separate 
apartment shaded by great beech trees which 
veiled with their foliage the balcony out of her 
little salon. Here her daughter with her gov- 
erness, herself and maid, had made it very home- 
like. 

One of Madeleine’s talents w r hich her sister 
most frequently criticised was this of adapting 
herself to all circumstances: wherever she was 
people and things around her seemed to conspire 
to render themselves easily adjusted. Her good 
humor, her graciousness, her keenness of mind, 
explain the kind of domination which she exer- 
cised over the trivial incidents of life. She was 
appreciative of what she ingenuously called sa 
chance , all the modest happiness of her exist- 
ence, just as if she had not gained them by her 
own fine qualities. And this evening when on 
entering her cosy reception-room her eyes fell 
upon her daughter, she w^as suffused wdth a feel- 


22 


Two Sisters 


ing of overwhelming gratitude for the joy this 
child represented to her and a feeling of pity for 
the sister who had just departed all alone. “Yes,” 
she said to herself, “this is contentment, this is 
life. She must have a child to live for.” And 
embracing the little one she kept her in her arms 
while she listened to a recital of the little doings 
the child had been engaged in during the after- 
noon hours and herself had answered inquiries 
about the departure of Agathe. A treasure 
though the pretty Charlotte was, she was at the 
same time one which occasioned much uneasi- 
ness. She was only nine years old, but the large 
brilliant eyes in the tiny face, the slender limbs 
and apparent nervousness told plainly in what 
danger the child was of being swept away out of 
the stream of life. The year before she had had an 
attack of rheumatism and the commencement of 
chorea which a short visit at Ragatz had helped 
cure, and now for a second time they had come 
here to prevent the return of any illness. Agathe 
frequently reproached Madeleine for her foolish 
optimism about the future of such a fragile child. 
The elder sister did not like to see in the depths 
of the mother’s eyes the passionate anguish which 
at times darkened them, together with the crav- 
ing no less passionate to make the delicate child 


Two Sisters 


23 


live. For Madeleine was one of those courageous 
souls who accept suffering for those they love 
and who prefer this risk of martyrdom to the 
coldness of indifference. This innate and yet 
deliberate generosity sustained her in the con- 
tinual trial which this fragile young life gave 
her. She would often reason a long time to per- 
suade herself that her instinct was wisdom, pro- 
longing, like all dreamers, her conversations 
with those she loved 1 into interminable dis- 
courses. 

One which was going on in her consciousness 
now, an hour and a half after bidding her sister 
adieu at the station while making her way alone 
to the hotel for dinner, may be taken as a type 
of the fluctuations of her thought on the con- 
cealed cares of her private life. 

“To wish for a woman a husband and a child,” 
she was saying to herself, “is, however, to wish 
her all possible unhappiness. For has not 
Agathe suffered through Mdris just as I have 
suffered from Charlotte? But if I were to lose 
her Georges could not fill her place (this was 
the name of her son who was with his father 
in Paris). And even if this awful misfortune 
were to befall me, should I wish that I had never 
brought her into the world? . . . Ah, no! 


24 


Two Sisters 


To love is to run the risk of being wounded and 
it is the risk one must run. Outside of it life 
is a barren waste. We must suffer in order to 
live. Oh, if Agathe could but have this life! 
What a depth there was in her voice just now 
when she said to me: ‘Some one whom I could 
love but truly — absolutely/ and how mocking 
she was in defying me. ‘I have never prevented 
you from looking for him. . . .’ she said. I 

have a mind to try to carry out what I threat- 
ened half in joke. She’ll not take to it — for she 
doesn’t fall in easily with anything. That’s her 
whole trouble. Her first motive is always to 
shrink and draw back. There on the platform 
when this stranger looked at her — for it was she 
at whom he was staring — her instinct was to 
say that this young man was not well-bred and 
then to add to me that he was ugly. Now the 
truth is that he was anything but that. . . . 

I have rarely seen a more interesting counten- 
ance. One hears now and then of chance meet- 
ings at a water-place which entirely change the 
destiny of a woman. . . . However, there 

will be nothing of that kind here surely, since 
Agathe is far away from Ragatz by now. . . .” 

While musing in this wise with herself, this 
pretty monologist had already entered into the 


Two Sisters 


25 


spacious dining-room where twice each day the 
numerous guests of this cosmopolitan caravan- 
sary were gathered together, some around the 
central table for table d'hote, others at their 
independent tables, whither they were attracted 
by the “beneficent nymphs of the springs," as 
an ancient poet would have said. Mme. Liebaut 
had her fixed place at a small table between two 
windows. She approached it greeted as usual 
by several persons whose acquaintance she had 
made, herself responding with a slight bend of 
the head and the smile which was her natural 
gift. 

Suddenly her face underwent a slight change 
and she felt herself blush as her sister had done 
at the station, for at a table near to her own she 
had just perceived the stranger whose meeting 
at the very moment of departure of the train had 
provoked the exchange of remarks with Agathe 
and about whom she had just been thinking as 
she stepped into the dining-room. It was the 
same, and with that face, too interesting to be 
forgotten. On his part he had seen Mme Liebaut 
before even she had seen him. He had fixed upon 
her a burning look, withdrawn as soon as it met 
the amazed eyes of the young woman and then 
he had let his eyes repose full upon her with an 


26 


Two Sisters 


equal wonder. The person seated opposite him, 
with whom he was dining and who had half 
risen to salute her, was the old Baron Favelles, 
one of the Parisian patients of Dr. Lidbaut and 
whom the latter had sent to Ragatz. Mme. de 
Mdris, during her visit, was often extremely 
vexed because of the insistent attentions of this 
baron to her sister. Once of late, on seeing him 
approaching in the park, she had said to Made- 
leine : 

“If a man looked out for the comfort of his 
wife he would never send to the same watering- 
place such a troublesome bore as that man.” 

“He talks to hear himself talk,” Madeleine had 
answered, “but he is really obliging and polite, 
Agathe.” 

“Oh, I know,” replied the elder, “there is no 
one and nothing on earth that wearies you. It 
is a fact ! It is humiliating for the persons you 
pretend to love. Whoever has no dislikes has no 
real likings.” 

It is easy to imagine that Favelles might not 
have been judged with such severity if he had 
not manifested for Mme. Lidbaut such a partial 
admiration. Chance having given the amiable 
man at his first introduction the rdle of switch- 
man reserved sometimes for simple puppets, it 


Two Sisters 


27 


becomes here the place to paint with a few 
strokes the characteristic features of an indi- 
vidual so significant in this story. 

His absurdity consisted (and so many Pari- 
sians are afflicted with it) in not wishing to 
grow old, either physically or morally. A former 
sous-prefet of the Second Empire, Favelles kept 
now with fully sixty-seven years the general style 
and manners of a dandy of that period. His 
white gaiters and gray hat with its long nap 
which he wore in summer, and his winter cos- 
tume of a close-fitting frock-coat and bright col- 
ored pantaloons gave him an appearance pecu- 
liar to the contemporaries of his time — a certain 
lofty bearing in which there is something mil- 
itary, something of the financier, an air of the 
administrator and the mannerisms of the gal- 
lant. 

In the mass of important and unimportant 
documents which were found in the Tuileries 
after the Fourth of September and published in 
several volumes by the miserable officials of 
that time, the enemies of Favelles — who hasn’t 
them? — gave themselves the malicious pleasure 
of bringing to light two lines concerning him. 
A secret note by the official mentions him, char- 
acterizing him thus: “Intelligent and enterpris- 


28 


Two Sisters 


ing but too dandified with too much of the odor 
di feminita ” The baron had not dropped any 
of the affectations summed up in the flattering 
epigram. But if the fine gentleman had not lost 
an inch of his waist measure he gave one such 
an impression by confining his somewhat bulging 
abdomen into a clever girdle, according to the 
advice of Brillat Savarin. If the top of his skull 
did not show the yellow light of a worn billiard 
ball it was thanks to a device no less scientific, 
and the fearful violet shade of his locks which 
served to cover his baldness declared the use of 
a water still more ingenious. His short whiskers 
which he had let get a little gray — a yery little — 
in order to deceive people — but whom, pray? — 
enframed a face which congestion was claiming 
for its own. No diet came into vogue to clear 
those red patches, and there was no massage 
that could make his movements more supple. On 
seeing him stand up as he did to effect the cere- 
monious salute on Madeleine’s arrival one might 
believe that one heard all his bones crack. He 
bowed, nevertheless, the same as he dressed, the 
same way that he conversed, without taking note 
of time or stiffness. He did not admit it either 
as regards his wit or his joints. It is the club- 
man who wishes to die on his feet and who will 


Two Sisters 


29 


not pardon himself the missing of the exposition 
opening or a great sale, or a first night. He has 
just read the book of the hour. He is going to 
present to you the man or woman who is “the 
rage.” This enervating mania to never fall be- 
hind played sometimes with Favelles peculiar 
tricks. The year before, it was his portrait 
painted by an artist of the newest school, so out- 
rageously realistic that once the canvas was hung 
on the molding of the Salon the baron left Paris 
for a week so as to get away from himself for a 
while — to use the French idiom. Another year 
it was his admission into the Colonists’ Com- 
mittee at a time when there was nothing talked 
about — eternal chimera of imaginative Celts! — 
except black Indias and the African conquests. 
Favelles found himself seated next to one of the 
most well-known members of the Commune 
whom' the blood of hostages did not prevent 
from making state advisor and commander of 
the Legion of Honor. The two men nearly came 
to blows at the first session. Another year the 
old dandy really had a duel for being carica- 
tured in a society paper under the pseudonym 
rather too clear and cruelly suggestive of “Baron 
Gravelle” The sexagenarian tried fire with the 
young journalist, but the latter showed himself 


30 


Two Sisters 


the good fellow that he was by firing into the air, 
although Favelles was at that place in life where 
its usefulness was becoming pathetic. But would 
Favelles give a minute’s thought to the time of 
his departure from this his pleasure ground, in 
the midst of his clubs, his strolls in the foyers 
of the theatres, his breakfasts in the taverns and 
dinners in the town? This light sketch of one 
of the survivors of an almost past generation 
will make you understand the quiet awakening 
of ideas which formed the background in the 
mind of Madeleine when after having her first 
shock she had seated herself. 

“I am going to write her as soon as to-morrow 
comes,” she said to herself, “that the gentleman 
‘twice ill-bred,’ as she styled him, is dining with 
Favelles this evening. . . . Now I am sure 

of knowing who he is. Favelles this minute is 
in the act of singing my praises. If it were not 
so he would not be talking with all those pre- 
cautions, leaning over so confidentially. Is it 
not written all over him in very large letters? — 
the dear old man! How odd it is though! I 
was just thinking of these meetings that upset 
one’s whole life. There is something really fan- 
tastic in the circumstance that the baron knows 
this person who so struck Agathe and me, and 


Two Sisters 


31 


of whom we talked in the way we did. . . . 
Yes, after all, it is a strange concurrence of 
incidents. Five minutes later the train departed. 
We had not caught sight of the man during 
Agathe’s whole visit at Ragatz nor had he seen 
us. And it is necessary that he should carry a 
letter to the station just in time to notice her — 
and he certainly did observe her. It is vain for 
her to say the contrary. It was not me he was 
looking at or both of us. It was Agathe alone, 
in fact. . . . Who can he be? Perhaps he 

is a patient just arrived yesterday or this morn- 
ing . . . and in that case Chance is more 

amazing still. I shall probably meet him, which 
will amuse me, and I shall learn also up to what 
point he is really this ‘monsieur twice ill-bred.’ 
He doesn’t look it ; no, not at all at this moment. 
I would wager from his attitude that he is some- 
what embarrassed because he perceives that I am 
aware of the subject of their conversation.” 

Musing thus, she studied the two men in the 
large mirror which served as a panel in the wall 
in front of which her table stood. The dandy of 
the Second Empire wore the important air of 
fche initiated who displays to the novice his 
knowledge of society. His interlocutor and him- 
self did not turn their eyes in the direction of 


82 


Two Sisters 


Mme Liebaut, which made her all the more cer- 
tain that she was the sole object of their re- 
marks. She continued to reason with herself: 
“The baron is going to present him to me, or he 
would not be the baron; and undoubtedly right 
off in the gallery.” 

The inmates of the hotel assembled as by a 
tacit agreement after each lunch and dinner 
on the long, covered gallery, some remaining 
seated talking or while sipping coffee, while 
others promenaded back and forth. The trees 
of the park grew in a green border around this 
open-air salon. Plants decorated the grass-plots 
with their foliage and their flowers, and climb- 
ing vines crept up on to the roof. Concealed in 
a summer house to accompany the sociable chat- 
ter of the guests was an orchestra which gave 
forth music, on rainy days and on sunshiny 
ones, in windy weather, and at night, suitable 
to the weather and the hour. This gallery ended 
in a rotunda where stalls common at all the 
springs along the Rhine displayed their irides- 
cent gew-gaws: stones at reduced prices and of 
all kinds — amethysts and onyx, emerald and 
chrysophase — by the side of hundreds of those 
objects carved in wood which may be seen in 
Switzerland and the Black Forest — cuckoos and 


Two Sisters 


33 


paper knives, cane-handles and trophies of hunt- 
ing. A profusion of striped scarfs from the 
Italian lakes a short distance away were along- 
side of coral jewelry and mosaics on wood from 
Sorrento, and combs, pins, paper knives and 
buckles in dark and light shell which were prod- 
ucts of Naples. In short, it was the numberless 
mass of souvenirs which all the visitors at such 
places buy in the idleness of their empty hours. 
Once in their homes these knicknacks become 
hideous. They resemble in this those intimacies 
begun sometimes while drinking a glass of the 
spring water or while resting in the bathing 
halls. But as Madeleine had not returned yet 
to Paris this little corner of the gallery always 
entertained her. It was pictured now in her 
mind to the least detail, with Favelles advancing 
toward her followed by the unknown. “It will 
be amusing,” she said to herself. “This gentle- 
man was perfectly aware at the station that we 
caught him in the very act of indiscretion. He 
has just seen that I have recognized him. How 
will he appear? I shall build on that. No 
doubt, I shall have something diverting for my 
scolding Agathe. . . 

The young woman finished her dinner amidst 
these thoughts. Having come into the dining- 


34 


Two Sisters 


room late, she found herself one of the last to 
leave it. Baron Favelles and his companion 
had risen some time before and had disappeared 
when she got up to return to her apartment. Be- 
tween the moment when she had imagined to her- 
self with amusement the embarrassment of the 
stranger and the moment when she put on her 
cape to protect her bare neck from the coolness 
of the night air, a very different reflection from 
the preceding had undoubtedly come into her 
mind; for instead of directing her steps to the 
door of the gallery where she had the almost 
certain chance of finding the two men, she left 
the dining-room by another exit which opened 
directly on the park. . . . Was it a reflection? 
Rather an impression — one of these vague inde- 
finable instincts w T hich the approach of a man 
destined to play an important part will rouse in 
a woman of extreme emotionable susceptibility. 
After saying to herself, “This introduction will 
be very amusing,” Madeleine had said, “De- 
cidedly not! After the manner in which this 
man looked at us at the station, it is better just 
the same not to allow him to be introduced.” 
( She was forgetting that she had protested 
against the plural “us.”) “This dining at the 
hotel is very suspicious. Why have I not seen in 


Two Sisters 


35 


this a new proof of his indiscretion ? He followed 
me from a distance when I went away from the 
station ; he found out where I lived and my name, 
and then that I dine here. The hotel is a restau- 
rant as well as hotel. He came here. But why? 
To try to see me again? To see me? But it was 
my sister he was looking at — Ah, well ! 
Agathe has gone. He is aware of it. There is 
but one person who can tell him about her — 
That is myself — ” And again she hesitated: 
“I am beating around the bush. What folly! 
These are ideas of a novel — That which is 
no romantic idea is that this gentleman was cer- 
tainly not very well mannered. At the station I 
declared the contrary to my sister, but it is quite 
necessary to admit that she was right. It is 
either one of two things: either he came to this 
hotel intentionally, and that looks altogether 
bad, in which case I must avoid him; or it is 
nothing but a coincidence — and why not then 
avoid him?” This charming woman would have 
been exceedingly astonished if some observant 
friend had explained the subtle backing down 
which this new train of ideas resolved itself into. 
Was not this shrinking of hers before a possible 
introduction to the stranger but a quiver of 
nervous fear? And what does an unconscious 


36 


Two Sisters 


and irresistible movement of this kind as oc- 
casioned by a stranger signify if not an obscure 
beginning of interest? Madeleine might have 
been satisfied of this by the singular pleasure 
which the proof of his refinement and her mis- 
take caused her a few minutes later. In leaving 
the dining-room by the park door she believed 
herself perfectly composed and had not counted 
upon an indiscretion which was really more cer- 
tain than that one of the young man so severely 
judged by Mme. de Meris. Is it necessary to say 
that it was Favelles’? 

The baron was not one of those who lose a 
single opportunity to shine in the presence of a 
pretty woman, even if it be by reflection from 
another man. While passing back and forth on 
the gallery he had kept his eye on Mme. Liebaut 
while finishing her dinner. He had seen her 
delay a minute while putting on her cape as if 
she were in doubt as to which way to take, and 
then had seen her go out of the door leading to 
the park. In the time which it took to go around 
the building in long steps which his old limbs 
accomplished remarkably well, rejuvenated by 
the importance of the effect he would produce 
rather than by any extraordinary efficacy of the 
mineral springs, he was before her. But he was 


Two Sisters 


37 


alone, and after inquiring about the departure of 
Mme. de M£ris, she heard him say: “I had din- 
ing with me to-night a person who would inter- 
est you very much, Captain Louis Brissonnet.” 

“The one who accompanied Colonel Mar- 
chand?” asked Madeleine, with a start of spon- 
taneous curiosity at which she herself was 
astonished. A shadow of uneasiness passed over 
her face. Favelles did not notice it in the obscu- 
rity of the lane which lamp-posts placed only 
here and there lighted very badly. He was, 
besides, too much occupied with what would be 
called his success to observe a slight and mo- 
mentary change of expression. 

All who followed the journals in their ac- 
counts of the heroic expedition of the Congo- 
Nile recall how one of the regiments which 
made up this expedition, cut off by a mistake en 
route from the rest of the troops some leagues 
from Bahrell-Gazal and attacked by the most 
ferocious tribe of this wild country, owed their 
safety to the coolness of Brissonnet, then lieu- 
tenant. Burning with fever and seriously 
wounded he displayed an energy in snatching 
his men from an almost certain massacre to 
which his chief, who was as magnanimous as 
he was courageous, gave resounding praise. It 


38 


Two Sisters 


was not surprising, therefore, that Mine Lidbaut 
knew the name of this brilliant officer and his 
deeds. Favelles would have preferred, however, 
to acquaint her with the whole thing and he did 
not now let her entirely off. 

“Yes,” he repeated, “the companion of Colonel 
Marchand, the Brissonnet who with five hun- 
dred sharpshooters held against five thousand 
negroes. Not being able to go forward, he made 
an attack over the shoulders of his fanatical 
porters. But you have read about it? . . . 

After three years Brissonnet, not recovering 
from his fatigues was sent here by the Depart- 
ment and he arrived yesterday morning. . . . 

He struck a very small hotel. . . . Heroism 

does not make one lucky, you know. ... I 
had chanced to meet him when I was a member 
of the Central Africa Committee and had been 
very interested in two or three of his reports. 

. . . After my douche when I was walking 

in the park I ran into him. ... I invited 
him to dinner, somewhat with the idea of pre- 
senting him to you. One is not spoiled at Kagatz 
with distractions and I was very sure that you 
would be pleased to hear him relate his adven- 
tures. . . . And then what had to happen 

but that this unfortunate man was seized in the 


Two Sisters 


39 


middle of dinner which a terrible attack of neu- 
ralgia. . . . It took him suddenly just as 

you entered. What hard luck! It must have 
been very serious, for I confess to you that I 
had announced to him that you would like to 
have me introduce him. To have seen you,” 
added the gallant, “and to lose an occasion to 
meet you is improbable. . . . But you will 

authorize me to repair this mishap to-mjorrow 
if you are in the park when the band is playing. 
I appointed that place as the rendezvous, pro- 
vided he doesn’t take it into his head to leave. 

. . . For while I was conducting him back 

to his hotel he was condemning the springs. He 
took his first bath to-day and sometimes the first 
bath awakens the miseries which the whole treat- 
ment benefits. I told him this without succeed- 
ing in drawing from him a promise to stay 
longer. Our hard luck would be complete. If 
he goes away when you are at Ragatz — you, 
Mme. Lidbaut — I resign from the Colonists’ 
Committee! Africa dulls our French officers. 

. . . In my time there was no neuralgia 

which was of any consequence. Lovely women 
first, health afterward! I always want to say 
to them as they do in the comedy : ‘Give me your 
thirty years if you are doing nothing with them.’ 


40 


Two Sisters 


Biit Brissonnet is as witty as he is courageous. 
How he can converse when he chooses to! If he 
remains, I shall make him tell his stories of 
hunting. . . . Mile. Charlotte has only to 

hear about one, and she would never leave the 
officer for a volume of Jules Verne. . . . 

Really, if he doesn’t stay, what a pity it will be 
and what a blunder somewhere!” 

Madeleine was too accustomed to these more or 
less indelicate madrigals of the baron to take 
much notice of them. Just this tone of an old 
general which he assumed drew upon this ex- 
cellent man the dislike of Mme de Mdris. Mme. 
Lffibaut, however, had long ago forgiven him the 
foolishness of his compliments, the “odor di 
feminita” grown stale, on account of the thought- 
fulness which the hardened old bachelor showed 
always for her little daughter. Again this time 
he had thought of the child. It was the mother 
in her that responded as she repeated the all but 
last words of Favelles : “What a pity, in- 
deed !” “Then if he stays,” Favelles went 

on, “you will see no objections to my presenting 
him to you?” 

“None in the slightest,” responded Madeleine. 

She heard herself say these words which contra- 
dicted so entirely her resolutions of a few min- 


Two Sisters 


41 


utes before and again she was amazed at the 
spontaneous burst with which she had accorded 
her acquiescence. But had she not just learned 
small facts which themselves completely contra- 
dicted the hypothesis sketched in her mind a 
quarter of an hour ago. She knew now that the 
presence of the stranger at a table in the hotel 
dining-room where she took her meals had not 
been premeditated. She knew that, having recog- 
nized her, he had thought of nothing except to 
avoid her, which is a long way indeed from at- 
tempting to impose himself. Finally she knew 
that that face judged by her at a first glance as 
so interesting did not belie the mind behind it. 
She had, as it were, thrown a challenge to Chance 
by her words, “Anything may happen,” at the 
station and Chance had answered by placing 
them, her sister and herself, into relations with 
such a man as a woman’s imagination always 
dreams of meeting. Following these various dis- 
coveries, her proposed plan was to be at once dis- 
placed. This was indeed truly the fact, for instead 
of leaving Baron Favelles as she certainly would 
have done under other circumstances in order to 
reach her apartment while her little daughter 
was still awake, she lingered in the park lanes to 
listen to the baron give endless accounts of the 


42 


Two Sisters 


explorer’s Senegal adventures. Before taking 
part in Marchand’s expedition, Brissonnet, then 
simple lieutenant, had accomplished in the re- 
gion of the Sahara one of the boldest recon- 
noitres recorded in the annals of our army in 
Africa, so rich in similar exploits. The old 
sous-prefet , elated at being listened to so com- 
placently by the most beautiful Parisian exiled 
at Ragatz, forgot the humidity of the air forbid- 
den in the most emphatic tones to rheumatics, 
and took no notice of the fine and treacherous 
fog which came up from the Rhine and spread 
over the valley now bathed in moonlight. Mad- 
eleine forgot also that she was thinly covered 
and that on her feet were only slippers, hardly 
of the sort to tread the soil of lanes damp with 
dew. But a project was commencing to be born 
in her mind, at first vague, then less vague, then 
defined. And an hour later when, having re- 
turned to “ Petites Charmettes” ( the name of her 
villa), she had embraced her sleeping child and 
was herself dressed for the night, this project 
had become fixed in very distinct lines. She was 
already reasoning about it as if it were an actual 
thing and not a subject to be longer debated. 

This little romance, and it was just that, was 
but a pure chimera sketched in her reverie, yet 


Two Sisters 


43 


it held her by a profound attraction. Romance 
was most natural to the secret dispositions of her 
nature which had become foolishly sentimental 
beneath the fixed resolutions of her simple bour- 
geois wisdom. 

Dismissing her maid, she remained for a long 
time on the balcony of her apartment, looking 
out over the far-reaching fields as they became 
more and more silvered with mist. The stars 
twinkled in the heavens and the moon shone with 
the brilliancy of metal. The Faulknis chain of 
mountains stood out in profile over the moving 
tops of the trees. The sound of the Tamina, that 
impetuous little river which rushes its greenish- 
blue water into the Rhine, alone broke the silence 
of the valley. Mme Lidbaut listened, her eyes 
wandering along the horizon of dull shadows, of 
transparent mists and elysian lights, all the time 
carrying along one of those interminable mono- 
logues to which she was accustomed. 

“Why could not this jest of ours at the station 
become a reality? . . . Yes, why not? 

Agathe has always said that she detested the 
people of the society world. Indeed, has it not 
been her fate to live among the indolent and the 
mediocre? But if one should succeed in intro- 
ducing to her a man like this one, already 


44 


Two Sisters 


famous, and who has numerous attractions, 
physical beauty first of all (without seeing any 
thing more of him but his general appearance, 
did I not have the impression that he was differ- 
ent from others?), then an admirable character 
to which General Marchand and his own deeds 
testify, and, finally, an unhappy destiny! Has 
not Favelles said that he was poor and that he 
had to ask for a vacation because he was so beset 
with petty worries? 

“But how ridiculous ! . . . In order that he 
and Agathe fall in love with each other it is 
necessary for them to become acquainted, and 
she has departed. Maybe he will leave, too. . . . 
If he goes it is of course the end of it. . . . But 
no — he will not leave. Perhaps for a minute he 
did have that intention when Favelles spoke of 
presenting him to me. His indiscretion at the 
station undoubtedly made him ashamed. He 
might have feared that I would be stiff and 
severe toward him. This susceptibility in a 
soldier proves that he has a soul altogether naive. 
It proves, too, that our meeting at the station 
made an impression on him. . . . Not our 

meeting, though, because he was looking only at 
my sister. She was at the car window and I had 
my back to him. . . . Besides if he had seen 


Two Sisters 


45 


both of us (we resemble each other so much), I 
would defy him to tell one from the other. . . . 
He will remain because of this resemblance, I 
will wager. It is my sister who impressed him, 
and he will Avant to see her again in me. . . . 

To see her in me? . . . How absurd again !” 

She repeated these tempting words vaguely 
and dreamily and continued: “I have ten days 
more to stay here. Why not profit by them? If 
Captain Brissonnet has really noticed Agathe he 
will wish to become intimate with me on her ac- 
count, and I shall lend myself to this purpose. 
This will not be coquetry. The point is to give 
him the desire and the opportunity to come to 
my home in Paris. He will come to us and find 
there my sister. I shall withdraw into the back- 
ground. ... It will be his place to make him- 
self loved. But if during these ten days this re- 
semblance to Agathe whom he admired at the 
station is the cause of his falling in love with 

me . . . Ah! there is no danger ” she 

said to herself, shrugging her beautiful shoul- 
ders . . . “What nonsense! . . . Then 

when he sees my sister in Paris he will admire in 
her the same qualities which may attract him to 
me. ... He will fall in love with the elder 
through the younger. . . . Mon Dieu! Agathe 


46 


Two Sisters 


is right; I see everything in the most favorable 
light. I presume at this early hour that he is in 
love with her. Do I even know that he isn’t 
already attached to somebody? That letter which 
he was going to throw into the mail car with the 
evident fear of missing the last post, was not 
that addressed to a woman? Nonsense. In cast 
this was so it could not be a very serious senti- 
ment, for he would not have stopped suddenly 
in that way on seeing Agathe if he were really in 
love. Anyway after ten minutes of conversation 
I shall know just how things stand. A man who 
isn’t free is very soon recognized. . . . But 

will he be here to-morrow? Just granting that 
he does remain, to think that in two or three 
months my sister may be on the point of begin- 
ning her life anew with him, and that this delay 
of a Paris express has been the cause of it ! . . . 
It would be amusing just the same if it should be 
so and because of this. . . . But I really am 
mad. I must go to sleep. . . ” 


CHAPTER THREE. 

TO ANOTHER^ ACCOUNT. 

Mme. Liebaut suspected so little any secret 
sentiment which might have been at the bottom 
of this romantic project that the first thing she 
did the next morning was to write a long letter 
to her husband. She sent him every day a de- 
tailed account of her life at the Spa and of 
the health of their little daughter. Once again 
this morning she could see in her imagination 
the physician as he received this letter just before 
starting out. He would open it in the two-horse 
coupd which took him to the Piti6, the hospital 
with which he was connected; leaving there, he 
would hurry across Paris from patient to patient. 
These four pages of fine handwriting would be 
read between two sad visits, and would be the 
daily diversion of pleasure to this excellent man 
whom Madeleine had married and for whom she 
cherished an affection which habit had made a 
strong friendship. Now this morning the good 
woman smiled at this image of him who was the 
companion of her life as she imagined him at- 
tending to the daily duties of his profession. The 
47 


48 


Two Sisters 


physician’s face, worn now at the age of forty- 
three by excessive work and a total absence of 
physical exercise, had nothing in common with 
that of the African officer. This latter was 
marked by a precocious lassitude, too, only the 
explorer’s fatigues suggested the mystery of the 
desert, the dangers confronted in a distant coun- 
try of broad rivers, of gigantic palms, and wild 
and untouched plains. The poetry of a death 
braved without flinching gave to the tempest- 
tossed face a masculine attraction which the 
rather homely face of the doctor had nothing of. 
His eyelids were a little wrinkled winking over 
books on pathology, his temples worn thinking 
up prescriptions, his shoulders rounded leaning 
over the chests to listen to their sounds. A unique 
contrast of outward appearances ! On reflection 
the devotion of one is as good as of the other, 
and that of a father of a family who suffers 
courageously for his own is of the same essence 
with the sacrifice of a soldier. Madeleine had a 
sound enough mind to appreciate the nobility of 
humble virtues which is in fact never overlooked 
except by the vulgar; but however 1 reasonable she 
was she still retained in a hidden recess of her 
being this seed of feminine fancy which expanded 
into dangerous flowering under the spell which 


Two Sisters 


49 


exceptional experiences and striking personali- 
ties exercised. Was there anything more im- 
prudent than this game which she was planning 
to play — this endeavor to attract the attention of 
a man who from the moment she first saw him in- 
terested her a trifle too much? She had a pre- 
monition of it, if one may say so, since she had 
justified herself beforehand with this thought: 
“If I wish him to notice me it is so that I may 
substitute later my sister for me, and that a 
slight liking for me may become a serious senti- 
ment for her,” a sophism of a creature of feeling 
half ignorant of herself. One thinks of that 
proverb which one of the most passionate of 
poets, Alfred de Musset, who paid dearly indeed 
for his experience, made the title of his master- 
piece, “Love is not to be trifled with . . 

Madeleine would have answered if anyone had 
raised a doubt as to her attitude, as she was leav- 
ing her house about eleven o’clock, letter in hand, 
and accompanied by her little daughter, that it 
was no case of trifling, and she would have said 
so in absolute good faith. An opportunity for a 
long time vainly sought offered itself for the re- 
making of Agathe’s future, and the younger 
sister would not have admitted for a second, so 
little in fact did she know herself that another 


so 


Two Sisters 


cause ga-ve her the vague emotion which made 
her question as she approached the hotel, “Is 
M. Brissonnet gone, or is he here? I shall know 
right away now, for it is the time when Favelles 
takes his walk after his bath and before his 
lunch. Surely he will go to find out as soon as 
he comes out. . . . There he is now — there 
are both of them . . .” 

Madeleine Li^baut had followed instinctively 
to reach the hotel letter box a rather roundabout 
path, which came into the avenue of the park just 
at the time Baron Favelles was displaying his 
elegant mid-day costume. There he was, indeed, 
all rigged out in his fine tan boots and gaiters 
of a bright duck and a complete suit of striped 
flannel which antedated by its pattern all modern 
materials. He wore, as his inveterate custom, a 
flower in his buttonhole half hiding the narrow 
red military ribbon. He was smoking, in dis- 
obedience of the laws of hygiene, his second 
cigar) of the morning ; his straw hat pushed back, 
showing his hair well groomed and lacquered. 
In his eye was a monocle set in shell, the setting 
and long black ribbon of which were exceedingly 
pretentious. Alas! nearsightedness made them 
necessary. This man, almost in hisi second child- 
hood, nearly three-quarters of a century old. 


Two Sisters 


51 


knew at that moment nothing more to be desired 
than to hold his body erect and to tower over the 
somewhat broken-down hero, Brissonnet, who 
was all nerves and moral energy. The officer was 
plainly clad in a long cloth overcoat, to all ap- 
pearances fresh from a ready-made clothier’s. 
He wore a panama, and on his feet were laced 
boots, the cracks of which were not fixed up very 
coquettishly by bootblacks: altogether he might 
indeed have cut a sad figure beside the lord, who 
took him strolling up the park avenue on this 
beautiful bright morning had he not possessed, 
as his natural birthright, a manner which was 
altogether distinguished. His look, which fol- 
lowed you with an obsession when you had once 
met it, entirely explained this. Mme. Lidbaut 
had no sooner met once again these eyes with 
their extraordinary force of expression than she 
experienced, as on the evening before, a peculiar 
start of obscure shyness. She almost regretted 
having taken this path. Her nervous fingers 
played with the curls of her daughter, but why? 
And was it an attempt to assume a composure, 
and did she feel apprehensive of danger ahead? 
Her child lifted her lovely face with a smile and 
said : “Mamma, there is M. Favelles with another 


52 


Two Sisters 


gentleman. How ill the gentleman looks! But 
his eyes are bright enough, aren’t they?” 

“Doubtless he is a traveler who may have con- 
tracted a fever in some hot climate,” the mother 
responded. Scarcely had she spoken these in- 
definite words from which her little daughter 
could not guess that she knew perfectly well who 
the enigmatical person w T as when the two men 
started out from the avenue. The baron was 
rustling with the pride of an animal trainer who 
brings forward his animal to show off his tricks, 
while the entrapped individual who played this 
rather unwilling role seemed very nervous and 
ill at ease, and to all appearances ardently 
desirous of being anywhere else than near the 
young woman to whom the introducer was say- 
ing: “Well, my dear friend, Commander Bris- 
sonnet has not left us. . . . You were regretting 
his possible departure. I have gotten hold of 
him again and am bringing him to you. . . ” 

When a young man and a young woman who 
guard between themselves, without yet knowing 
it, the little mystery of a secret, however inno- 
cent it may be, are brought together in this way 
and with as little preparation, the first words 
uttered by one or the other are of decisive im- 
port. The simple voice of someone whose face 


Two Sisters 


53 


has struck you increases or destroys at once a 
new-born interest. A gesture suffices, or an atti- 
tude, too much or too little ease. If Brissonnet 
had had a manner either a bit too self-confident 
or too affected, if he had let fall in a displeasing 
tone some pretentious or hackneyed remark, the 
fragile scaffolding of the sentimental edifice 
which had been constructed in the imagination of 
the younger sister for the future happiness of the 
elder then and there would have crumbled away. 
As soon as Favelles had pronounced his words of 
presentation which informed too much of the in- 
terview of the night before, Madeleine felt her- 
self redden. She saw that the undisguised blunt- 
ness of the words annoyed Brissonnet no less. 
His eyelids dropped for an instant, but enough 
to speak for this officer, who had carried on war 
under the greatest difficulties, a delicacy of feel- 
ing equal to that of any woman. She felt in 
harmony with him at once and experienced a 
need of showing her sympathy with the shy hero. 
Favelles’ indiscretion furnished the pretext. So 
she responded : 

“ ’Tis true, I should have been full of regret, 
like any other true Frenchwoman, to have been 
so near one of Colonel Marchand’s companions 
without having told him how much my friends 


Two Sisters 


U 

and myself have admired the courage of his 
soldiers, and also how much we pitied them. . 

The captain was looking at her while she was 
speaking, and his shyness departed. She read 
in his serious eyes gratitude and modesty. Like 
his chief, on this point Brissonnet disliked parad- 
ing the glorious deeds of his battlefield life 
among the sad actualities of the present. Or- 
dinarily, one was sure to displease him by ques- 
tioning him about the cruel episode which was 
associated with changing of the name of an 
African village by the English out of respect for 
a handful of brave French gathered there before 
the victorious sirdar. But he felt that no mean 
curiosity was hidden underneath the few words 
spoken by Mine. Lidbaut, and that they expressed 
a sincere sentiment He answered her with a 
like simplicity, and in a voice which had a par- 
ticular charm about it, very masculine but very 
sweet, of extreme firmness in the high tones, and 
all caress in the deep ones : 

“It is not out there that we were to be pitied, 
Madame, but since . . . yet far less than those 
who have caused the fruit of all our efforts to be 
lost . . But he felt too much pride to 

abandon himself to melancholy before a stranger, 
however sympathetic she might be. He would 


Two Sisters 


55 


have had a horror of countenancing an exchange 
of superficial remarks on such a subject. He 
changed the conversation : “But the past is past. 
The life of an army man is all contained in the 
verb ‘serve.’ There is nothing to reproach his 
destiny with from the moment that he can con- 
jugate this verb in the three tenses : I have served, 
I serve, I shall serve. Monsieur Favelles here 
makes out that these springs at Ragatz will put 
me in a state of health so that I may say the 
future without hesitation. I own that I did not 
believe this on coming here and am anticipating 
this result still less now . . .” 

“Tell him, my dear friend,” said the old dandy 
to the young woman, “that he has too litle pa- 
tience and tell him of the miracle the baths haw* 
worked upon Charlotte. Is it not so, Mademoi- 
selle?” And he now addressed himself to the 
child who, frightened away at being thus ques- 
tioned, began to turn vigorously her jumping 
rope and to start running away from them down 
the avenue. 

“It is certainly so,” said the mother, quietly, 
“and six weeks ago she could not have jumped 
rope like that . . .” 

“And I couldn’t have made this back move- 
ment stroke with this finger,” insisted Favelles, 


56 


Two Sisters 


and with his cane he made a fencing movement. 
This survivor of the Second Empire had been in 
his youth quite naturally one of those lovers of 
the sword, so many of whom existed around the 
year 1865. A grimace of pain contracted his 
face while he extended again his arm, turning 
again his stiff hand round and round and moving 
his knotted fingers. Moreover, he executed sev- 
eral good movements; then supported himself 
with his cane again while he let fall the tri- 
umphant words: “You see what may happen 
after seventeen baths . . . ” which brought 

a half smile to the lips of Madeleine. A smile 
passed over the face of the captain which ordi- 
narily was so tragic. It showed that were he to 
have a little happiness and tranquility a child- 
like gaiety could be quickly born in this man on 
whom too many years of too intense and too 
painful a tension had weighed. The vain baron 
was so proud of the fact that he no longer was 
obliged to walk bowed and with a dragging step 
that he did not notice the smile that passed over 
both their faces, as all three started into the 
avenue where the young Charlotte was playing, 
whipping up with her rope the large blue gravel 
taken from the bed of the Rhine. Mine. Lidbaut 
and Brissonnet had turned their faces slightly 


Two Sisters 


57 


around while Favelles commenced his reminis- 
cences. Although his constant care was to be in 
style his necessity of telling stories made him 
always the classical old man of the legend “Lau- 
datore Temporis Acti.” His fencing stroke re- 
called the fighters of his youth, and those cere- 
monious meetings of duelists on coming out 
from the Maison d’Or and the Cafd Anglais. 
Those adventures forgotten to-day of splendid 
companions who made such brilliant conversa- 
tionalists, and the glories of the fencing school 
came into his discourse; of Alphonso de Alda- 
ma, of Georges Brinquant, and of Saucede. 
Madeleine listened distractedly to names which 
represented to her only phantoms, although those 
who had borne them had been the most alive of 
the living! Secretly, too, she could not help 
studying the African officer who had fallen back 
into his customary state of meditation which 
seemed to transport him far away into that coun- 
try under the torrid sun, the land of primeval 
forest and of danger. They had not taken a 
couple of hundred steps in this way when sud- 
denly and for no apparent cause he took leave 
with such abruptness that Favelles himself was 
put out of countenance. 

“You will come around this afternoon . . ?” 


58 


Two Sisters 


he called. “But what makes you in such a 
hurry . . . V' 

And when Brissonnet was some distance off 
after making a response, as evasive as it was 
brief, he said : “Sometimes he is so untamed that 
you must pardon him. I shouldn’t be surprised 
if the Congo sun had affected his head. . . . 

Be indulgent to him, Mme. Madeleine. He didn’t 
converse at all this morning. . . . But, non- 

sense, you will see him again. People can’t miss 
each other in this little basin of Ragatz. . . . 

It seems to me that he has disappointed you. I 
shall retaliate.” 

The psychology of the old prefet would have 
been without doubt more penetrating if he had 
been working for himself, but without this he 
would certainly not have merited the flattering 
notes found in the secret closet of the Tuileries. 
The sudden departure of Captain Brissonnet was 
on the contrary precisely the opposite of that 
awkwardness on his part which the elder man de- 
plored. During the first minutes of the meeting 
the pleasure of finding the enigmatical person of 
the station so like what she imagined, had em- 
boldened the timid Madeleine, and already she 
was commencing to reproach herself for a too 
hasty familiarity with a newcomer who could 


Two Sisters 


59 


judge her wrongly. This unexplained flight of 
his quieted this slight scruple. She began to 
give herself up to the caressing reverie of the 
night before and the morning, so much more 
freely since she felt no dissimulation after the 
entirely frank letter to her husband. How should 
the idea come to her that some personal feeling 
was mingled in with such a disinterested project : 
this of effecting a marriage with this brave but 
unhappy officer on the one side and with her 
sister on the other, unhappy also with all her 
wealth and name? Agathe’s unhappiness had 
occupied her mind too long. Only one thing now 
troubled the conscience of the prudent woman, 
bourgeois even in her romantic scheme. She 
wished to know something about Brissonnet be- 
sides his glorious deeds. She wished to know 
something of his family, and that evening when 
she found herself again with Favelles after 
dinner she employed her diplomacy in question- 
ing him on the origins of the captain without 
having the manner of being especially interested. 

“There is his misfortune,” Favelles made 
answer to her, “he sprang from humble people. 
But he has gone straight to the top. His parents 
were farmers in Perigueux. They sacrificed 
themselves to bring him up. I give Brissonnet 


60 


Two Sisters 


credit for not blushing for his origin. He will 
tell you himself when he knows you better of the 
devotion of his father and mother whom he lost 
while he was in Africa. What a trial it must 
have been! Moreover, his humble birth makes 
itself in certain differences, as for instance in 
the way he left us this morning. ... If I 
could only make a man of the world of him. If 
it would occur to him what a figure he could cut 
if he dressed every evening.” When the sous- 
prefet said these words the seriousness and im- 
portance on the face of the ex-officer were in a 
way admirable. “He could marry as he should 
choose, for he possesses a certain dignity with 
all his awinvardness that belongs to the soldier. 
His clothes are cheap, but he takes care of him- 
self well. The thing he lacks” — and the old dandy 
winked his eye in a w my that suggested the odor 
di feminita — “wiiat he has missed is to have in- 
terested some w^oman comme il faut . . . Then, 
as he saw the brow r s of Mme. Li^baut frown 
severely at his expression, in wffiich was too 
strong an insinuation, he insisted further : “You 
think me immoral. . . . But the interest could 
be innocent. In a trifling affair there may be 
honor. . . .” He w y as laughing gaily at his 

coarse remarks while adjusting his monocle with 


Two Sisters 


61 


a most comical impertinence. Just in this was 
another trait of his character which was very 
logical. He loved to astonish with these half- 
cynical insinuations the young women with whom 
he occupied his time as he did with Mme. Lid- 
baut acting the disinterested but sincere Sigisbee. 
For would they not suppose that he had had a 
long experience of gallantry with the ladies? 
Madeleine knew this ridiculousness in him. Or- 
dinarily she paid no attention to these worn-out 
affectations with which he sought to cover up his 
decadent condition. Her delicate optimism which 
her sister reproached her most for insisted on 
seeing in the resigned Don J uan the real qualities 
which were his — his good nature and kindness, 
his courage before his approaching infirmity and 
death, the nobility above all which stamped his 
fidelity to the cause of the Empire which he had 
served when young and which was now no more. 
But this time she w T as too greatly shocked not to 
make it felt by him, who in consequence was con- 
siderably put out. 

“That was a great blunder I made,” he said 
when Madeleine had left him after being ac- 
companied to the door of her house without re- 
sponding to him even in monosyllables. “It is 
wonderful that such a pretty Eve as she is has 


62 


Two Sisters 


not the least desire for forbidden fruit. Her 
husband is a good sort of man and a good phy- 
sician. His diagnoses are of the highest order. 
But just the same for this blockhead to be paired 
off with this refined Parisienne is a little too 
hard. A Norman horse harnessed with an Ara- 
bian filly; a coach horse and a little cob would 
be better . . .” 

This vulgar metaphor of a vulgar mind which 
had, however, its kindly side, showed the race- 
track tastes of the baron who in his coltish days 
had made away with twenty thousand pounds 
as part proprietor of a racing stable. It occurred 
to him the next day on seeing the young wife of 
the Parisian physician sitting so “cavalierly” 
(to use his figure) besides his protdgd Brissonnet 
in circumstances which should have made him 
jealous of the successes of others had he not been 
too filled with conceit. After having searched 
vainly for Brissonnet all the morning, Favelles 
had discovered him listening to the music under 
the bower of trees in the middle of the park, and 
naturally he had led him toward the avenue 
where Mme. Li^baut was ordinarily to be found. 
She was in the habit of coming there at about 
three o’clock with her little daughter. Seated in 
a chair in the shadow of the trees she would work 


Two Sisters 


68 


on some piece of needlework with the patience 
and contentment she employed on all tasks. This 
dreamer was never idle. She very rarely read. 
The chimeras with which her fancy fed itself 
made the inventions of writers appear prosaic 
and cold without realizing it. 

This particular afternoon she had brought to 
busy her hands skeins of fine wool mixed with a 
twist of silk to make into a soft sack for Char- 
lotte. She had placed her chair under a large 
tree where the breeze made a slight rustling of 
the leaves which accompanied her reveries. Her 
supple form was gowned in a pale pink batiste, 
and on her head was a large mull hat of the 
same tint; her pretty fingers extended out from 
the long mitts of black lace under which the deli- 
cate flesh of her forearm could be seen. Alto- 
gether she had the appearance of being the elder 
sister of the little girl who was playing with her 
hoop beside her. 

One of the streams that flow down the moun- 
tain sides into the Rhine winds around through 
the willows and cuts off this group of five trees 
making of them (what is called in French a 
quinconce) a secluded retreat which had become 
a favorite spot for Madeleine. As the baron 
and the officer approached Charlotte saw them, 


@4 


Two Sisters 


and with one of those spasmodic movements 
which timidity causes in very nervous children, 
had given her hoop such an unskilful knock 
with her stick that it went rolling into the 
water. Giving a cry, the mother looked up 
to see her standing, her arms extended, quite 
at a loss how to save her toy which was being 
carried away by the current. It went along 
bending the grasses, winding around stones 
where the water was foaming into a white froth, 
until it stopped for some seconds held in a little 
bend which the brook made. Madeleine w r as look- 
ing on laughing fondly at little Charlotte who 
was intent and tragical over her loss as she stood 
w r atching the slender circle emerge and sink in 
the water until it finally became fastened on to 
the projection of land. A more violent push of 
the water made the hoop clear the bend, to be 
carried far away. 

Suddenly the mother heard the child utter an- 
other cry, this time with astonishment and hope, 
for Brissonnet had just jumped the breadth of 
the stream with one bound and was on the other 
bank treading among the tall grasses with the 
fine step of one familiar with the underbrush. 
He was leaning over while hanging from the 
stout branch of a tree. With his free hand he 


Two Sisters 


65 


seized the hoop, and already in another jump had 
gotten back on to the other side where the little 
girl was awaiting him at the water’s brink. In 
this simple action, which however a professional 
gymnast alone could accomplish, he had shown 
a grace and force which contrasted singularly 
with the invalid appearance and his reduced 
frame. The explorer in him came to light with 
all the physical skill which he had acquired 
through the training of several years of a savage 
life. It was the first idea which occurred to 
Favelles as he joined Mme. Lidbaut during the 
few moments in which they were watching the 
officer and the child up by the side of the stream 
while she was exclaiming over her lost toy and 
becoming more friendly with its rescuer. 

“Our officer imagines himself again in Africa,” 
he said. “If all the soldiers of Colonel Marchand 
have that agility I no longer marvel at the dis- 
tance they went over. . . . Do you?” and he 

still blew the horn for Brissonnet with all the 
increasing vanity which that other was causing 
him to have. 

“Now that you have become friends, Made- 
moiselle,” he said addressing Charlotte, who had 
just come up, “ask the Captain to tell you where 
he learned to jump like that — almost two yards 


66 


Two Sisters 


and a half. Surely this stream is all that. Well, 
one might clear a different distance yet if it 
were a matter of putting space between a lion 
and oneself.” 

“A lion,” spoke up Charlotte quickly. “You 
have met a lion in Africa, Monsieur?” 

“I have met a hundred of them,” returned 
Brissonnet, laughing heartily at the stupefied 
look of the little Parisienne, “two hundred. . . . 
But Monsieur Favelles gives me too much credit 
in attributing to me a speed in running that is 
capable of escaping when pursued by one of 
them. . . . Besides, I have never found it 

necessary. When a man meets a lion, Made- 
moiselle, remember this, it is always the lion 
who starts first to save himself. These great 
beasts meow very loud. Did you know that they 
are nothing but enormous cats?” 

“Ask him then where this scar came from ” 

Favelles began. The officer did not have time 
to cover his hand, on which was a long line like 
that of an old wound. “Come now, Brissonnet, 
tell that story without false modesty, as you did 
at one of our dinners, and you may judge, 
Mademoiselle, if lions are the great inoffensive 
cats of which he speaks.” 

“You will not refuse Charlotte this pleasure, 


Two Sisters 


67 


Monsieur,” said the mother, as she turned to- 
ward her daughter, whose face was eager with 
interest. These few remarks had been exchanged 
so rapidly that Madeleine had found herself 
making this request again almost without real- 
izing it. Favelles had placed familiarly a chair 
near to her own and had sat down in it, while 
Brissonnet remained standing. Mme. Li^baut’s 
Words were equivalent to a command to seat 
himself in his turn. An expression of annoy- 
ance had passed over his face when it was sug- 
gested that he should narrate his own adven- 
tures, for to do this was always disagreeable to 
him. At this minute and in the presence of this 
woman who had made on him a very profound 
impression during the last forty-eight hours this 
unpleasantness became almost a suffering. How- 
ever, he yielded with a simplicity that was a 
little well-worn, as is often the case with sol- 
diers, but which has a great charm when one 
feels that it is to be very real and not acted. 

“On this particular occasion,” he said, “things 
happened through my own fault, or, rather,” 
he rectified himself, “partly through adverse 
chance. This was how it was. We were on 
the march, fifty men and myself, just before a 
reconnoitre. Our chief had not concealed from 


68 


Two Sisters 


us that he dreaded these parts where he was 
sending us, for they were inhabited by can- 
nibals. But not until this day did the men, all 
courageous fellows, waver in the least, and this 
was the third since we left camp. I felt them 
waver now. The cause of it I cannot tell. These 
latent panics cannot be explained. It was ter- 
ribly hot and we had been marching for forty- 
eight hours along a lake vast as the sea without 
encountering a single living being. The trees all 
about us were perfectly gigantic; the under- 
brush almost impenetrable. We were marching 
rank and file, one after another, in Indian fash- 
ion, and I was last. In a moment the entire file 
stopped. I ran ahead to find out the cause of 
their sudden immobility and saw fifty metres 
away a huge lion standing and looking us over. 
I made a sign to my men not to stir. As quietly 
as I could I took my gun, cocked it, and put my 
knee to the ground to take aim at the beast. I 
was in command; it was up to me to give the 
example of coolness. . . . The lion, looking 

at me with astonishment, lashed his flanks with 
his tail. ... I fired. I believed the shot 
was a sure one, but I had only wounded him 
and with a slight wound that did not affect a 
muscle, for he commenced to come stealthily 


Two Sisters 


69 


toward me, his clumsy feet stepping very heav- 
ily. They have no lightness except when they 
jump. I was ready to fire a second time, only 
I did not wish to shoot until I was sure. So I 
waited, and what should happen but all of a 
sudden a great noise broke out on all sides, near 
me, all around my head! It was my men, who, 
without a command, were firing at the lion, with 
the result of missing him. The animal stopped 
as if stupefied and, gathering himself together, 
made a spring. When I saw his great white 
body in the air I believed all was over. I fired 
just the same, and this time through the heart. 
It was all over with him now, and he would have 
fallen on me if I had not jumped aside. As it 
was, he took out part of my arm in his agony. 
. . . Those are my lion hunts, Mademoi- 

selle, ” he concluded, “and I haven’t even the 
skin of this one. Being in a hurry and over- 
burdened with baggage, we left it.” 

“Life in Europe must seem to you very 
monotonous in contrast with such sensations,” 
Madame Lidbaut said, after a silence. 

“Sometimes,” he replied. “But it isn’t the 
dangers which make expeditions like these un- 
forgettable. It is the impressions of free nature 
which one finds no longer in our old and too 


70 


Two Sisters 


civilized countries. Since we are on the chapter 
of lions, permit me to tell you another episode 
less tragic but more significant. ... It hap- 
pened that one night in camp I was awakened 
by a singular noise. I looked through one of 
the openings of the canvas, and saw in the clear- 
ing where we had pitched our tents a lion, his 
lioness and two whelps going by. The moon 
bathed the camp in a light which was as clear 
as day. The male lion was noticeably restless 
and kept looking all the while at the white cones 
which were placed equi-distant along and stop- 
ping every minute to sniff. The female, indif- 
ferent to everything except her little ones, was 
teaching them how to walk. The cubs would 
make five, six or seven steps awkwardly on their 
great paws, then roll over. The mother, lying 
on her back, would then play with them. She 
w r ould force them to stand up again, the six or 
seven steps would recommence, then the tumble 
and the playing. . . . This odd family spent 

at least an hour crossing this space, illuminated 
by the moon, and so disappeared into the for- 
est. ... I did not have for one second a 
feeling of peril, but was conscious only that I 
was witnessing a marvelous scene of primitive 
life. This visit of the four lions in the night 


Two Sisters 


71 


was a fete, a spectacle like which I have never 
seen anything in the most celebrated theatres. 
. . . Monsieur le Baron, you think me very 

artless, I suppose ?” 

Favelles, in fact, had begun to laugh at the 
last words. The explorer added with an expres- 
sion of almost childish alarm which he some- 
times had: “I ought to have mistrusted you. 
Between a Parisian like yourself and an African 
the game isn’t an equal one. You are making 
fun of me. Own up ” 

“Not the least in the world,” said Favelles 
warmly, “but when you mentioned the word the- 
atre I thought there was no need of going so far 
in order to enjoy a performance like that which 
you so well describe. I, who rarely leave the 
Champs-Elysdes, have seen your family of lions 
at the Summer Circus, that entertaining place 
which the brigands have now demolished.” ( One 
supposes that these “brigands” were for the 
faithful of the Second Empire all the governors 
who without exception had been in since the 
shameful day of the Fourth of September.) 

It was only necessary to hear Favelles pro- 
nounce these words Cirque d’Ete to understand 
what those Saturdays in May and June had 
meant to him during those years, as to all men 


72 


Two Sisters 


of fashion of his generation. Around the track 
all of Paris which seeks amusement found a 
rendezvous — a special kingdom for the fastidious 
Monsieur Loyal. “Yes,” Favelles continued, “I 
do not remember at what time they put a large 
cage in the middle of the arena, but they did 
show there at one time a lion and a lioness and 
two little ones just born. . . . Suddenly 

they would make it pitch dark, and the four 
beasts would become bathed in electric light. 
. . . The two whelps and the lioness would 

play under the false light of the moon, just like 
yours, while the father walked back and forth, 
like your lion. They trained them to it. This 
comparison of ideas came to me and I had to 
smile. The moral is as it is in fables, since this 
is a matter of animals. Africans become very 
soon good Parisians. A little training suffices 
for it. That was the history of these lions, 
Brissonnet. It will be yours, and from the man- 
ner in which you tell your story it is so already.” 

He, whom the officer, somewhat according to 
custom named plebeianly “Monsieur Baron” be- 
lieved it very kind of himself to make this com- 
pliment to the narrator. He did not suspect that 
he was touching, by this comparison with the 
domesticated lions, one of his most sensitive 


Two Sisters 


73 


spots. A shadow passed into the depths of the 
soldier’s eyes, eyes that had seen so many tragic 
and wild scenes of great sublimity. He had 
dreamed of and had lived a heroic epic poem, 
but had not his several years of noblest sacrifice 
ended in a performance something like this of 
these poor wild beasts — first that entry into Paris 
of Marchand and his companions, then at last a 
curiosity around a name — nothing more ! It was 
melancholy that preyed upon the mind of Bris- 
sonnet since his return. The recollection, by 
Favelles, of these lions so like those he had met 
in the desert, which had become one of the 
“numbers” in a circus program was a symbol too 
significant of his destiny. There was a silence 
which the elder man, elated at his own anecdote, 
did not truly interpret. Madeleine with her 
womanly tact looked at the officer and felt what 
impression had been made on his embittered 
heart. Instinctively she wished to dress the 
wound which suddenly had been reopened: “I 
do not feel like you at all,” she began addressing 
Favelles. “I have never been able to endure 
looking at a wild beast in a cage. They suffer 
too much. I would leave the circus rather than 
to witness such parody, the sporting of this 
lioness and her cubs for the sole purpose of di* 


74 


Two Sisters 


verting this blase public. What a prospect for 
these poor beasts, who have such need of space 
for their free life, to die consumptive behind 
their prison bars! . . . But instead while 

listening to Monsieur Brissonnet I saw that 
clearing, the forest all around, the bright moon- 
light, those splendid animals and I envied him. 
... I am very appreciative to him above all,” 
she continued, drawing her child to her, “for 
taking so much trouble for Charlotte. . . . 

Come,” she concluded, addressing her, “aren’t 
you going to thank Monsieur Brissonnet for the 
interesting story?” 

“Thank you, Monsieur,” and the little girl’s ex- 
quisite face lifted as she said: “Do you know 
any more, Monsieur?” 

“The whole woman in that question,” cried 
Favelles, clapping a bravo. “When Eve took the 
apple in the garden which the serpent gave to 
her, she ought to have said to him, too: ‘Where 
is there another?’ ” 

“It is a little indiscretion of hers,” the mother 
interrupted, “and you are going to end by spoil- 
ing her for me if you appear to think it all very 
natural . . .” 

Her gesture contradicted the severity of her 
language, for she caressed the cheek of the child 


Two Sisters 


75 


whose face was upturned pleadingly to her own. 
Then coming back to that ever present project 
and in order to justify the great intimacy of this 
conversation in her own eyes, she added : “What 
a pity that my sister should leave day before 
yesterday. She is so interested in all accounts 
of travels and would have been so delighted to 
talk with M. Brissonnet . . .” and she observed 
the latter from the corner of her eye while she 
was speaking, and it seemed to her that at the 
mention of her absent sister his interest seemed 
to awaken. “Could it be that she has already 
made an impression on him?” This thought 
passed vividly through her mind and was the 
reason which led her to let Favelles and Bris- 
sonnet accompany her to her apartment without 
any appreciable feelings of remorse. If it was 
true that the remembrance of Agathe seen for 
so short a time at the door of the compartment 
remained still vivid in the officer’s mind, half of 
her work was done. The week which she had to 
spend at the Spa with the young man would 
he sufficient to accomplish the rest 


CHAPTER FOUR. 

A soldier's heart. 

Madeleine Liebaut was not mistaken, for he 
whom she was romantically planning of making 
her brother-in-law had indeed been struck very 
forcibly by the exquisite charm of Agathe’s face 
at the window of the train. But Madeleine did 
not guess that the work that she wished to acr 
complish had already been accomplished in part 
in an inverse sense. It only needed that the 
officer should observe her cross the dining-room 
that first evening and afterwards that he should 
converse with her in the vast and beautiful park 
for this extraordinary resemblance between the 
two sisters to draw upon the younger the ad- 
miration awakened in a flash by the beauty of 
the elder. It was indeed Mme. de Mdris whom 
he had observed at the station and he had found 
her immediately in Madeleine so entirely that 
he had forgotten altogether the one seen but for 
an instant at the station. Forgotten her? No, 
he had confounded them. Besides would he have 
been able to distinguish the one absent from the 
76 


Two Sisters 


77 


one present as far as their loveliness of appear- 
ance went? Could he have preferred the first 
whom he had seen leaning smilingly out of the 
window, to this one who was coming and going 
beside him in this frame of verdure, of moun- 
tains, and springs that made up Ragatz? No, 
hardly, for Chance and Time took the matter in 
hand. Madeleine had become for Brissonnet the 
living fairy of this cool and wild valley. The 
image of this exquisite woman with her deep in- 
telligent eyes, her delicate features, her fine 
gestures, and whom one could guess to be so 
sensitive and responsive to the best things of life 
under her repressed exterior was to be associated 
in his thoughts then and for always with these 
inclines shaded with pines and larch trees, with 
these bridges made by throwing trunks of trees 
over the torrents, with these gorges whose great 
rocks overhung boiling waters which told of the 
fury of ancient cataclysms, with these prairies 
mown the night before -and perfumed with the 
fragrance of hay, with the paradox of this 
charming little village of springs — an oasis of 
elegance sheltered in a lost valley. For him also 
these eight days of daily meetings with her were 
to be an oasis, the first where it had been per- 
mitted him to stop and repose — just to exist, he 


78 


Two Sisters 


asked no more, in the charm which emanated 
from her — this woman secretly and silently 
loved. 

The little drama of sentiment, the first act of 
which was unfolded during this week without 
any particular events — like the beginning of 
many tragedies of the heart — would be unin- 
telligible if one did not explain at the very out- 
set what state of mind the officer had passed 
through. They will explain the suddenness of a 
passion which might appear to be a little too 
impetuous. However, experience shows that this 
is so very often, for the strongest passions of love 
are most frequently the most sudden. Favelles 
had spoken the truth when he said that Brisson- 
net had grown up from the humblest conditions. 
Until his twenty-fourth year he had been obliged 
to apply himself so strenuously to procure his 
education and a first-class standing in Saint- 
Maixent that there had been literally no leisure 
for his heart to make itself felt. What he knew 
of the other sex had been limited for him to a 
few banal adventures without poetry and with- 
out a to-morrow. And then had followed his 
life in Africa which was so contrary to all that 
he had been accustomed : a succession of forced 
marches, unceasing struggles and difficulties 


Two Sisters 


79 


against climate and against ferocious beasts and 
men, until finally it had ended in the prepara- 
tion and the accomplishment under Marchand 
of that remarkable journey across the great 
black continent. On his return he found again 
difficulties attendant on a career — the result of 
the ill-will of the public authorities in respect to 
the members of the mission. 

Family troubles were mixed with these, then a 
breakdown in health, but, worse than all, he was 
in the vague state of terrible misanthropy which 
is so easily developed with soldiers suddenly put 
off duty. These diverse circumstances combined 
had not permitted the explorer to have any other 
emotions than those connected with disappointed 
ambition. There was, therefore, in him an im- 
mense secret reserve of tenderness which had re- 
mained whole, a force of latent passion, if one 
may so express it. This look of a romantic hero, 
which Madeleine called her sister’s attention to 
in a tone of half seriousness and half play did not 
deceive! All the sorrow suffered in war during 
several years had refined, and as it were, brought 
to life all the feelings of the soldier instead of 
hardening them. It is the ordinary experience 
of men of great enterprise who have dared much 
that, having to suffer too much and too trying 


80 


Two Sisters 


things if they do not lose all faculty of loving, 
they become almost morbidly emotional. This 
apparent anomaly is only logical. Strong 
natures naturally go to extremes in their good 
as well as bad qualities. If they are born with 
tendencies to selfishness they soon have to go 
wild to destroy in themselves all the elements 
which will oppose the implacable development of 
their personality. If, on the contrary, they have 
received along with life that desire for tender 
impressions which is like a sense by itself, and 
as unintelligible to those who do not possess it 
as the light may be to a blind man or the sound 
of a voice to a deaf person, destiny may direct 
them to walks of life the most contrary to their 
original tastes and it suffices but an incident, 
when the Romeo or the Don Quixote surges in 
them, a Romeo who has too often passed the age 
of being loved, a Don Quixote whose Dulcinea has 
not been waiting for her cavalier. The first case 
was not that of Louis Brissonnet. The terrible 
fatigues of his African campaigns had not stolen 
away his youthful appearance any more than it 
had his young heart. The other case was not 
that of Mme. Lffibaut. The sister of Agathe rep- 
resented so well, in spite of her middle class 
birth and marriage, the type of woman who is 


Two Sisters 


81 


made by her charm of imagination and nobility 
of character the ideal which any devotee at the 
court of Cupid might dream of for his beloved. 
It would be impossible to imagine a combination 
of conditions better fitted for quickly transport- 
ing two beings to a higher degree of reciprocal 
attraction. There is something in it to make 
one tremble for her and for him — someone who 
was not an old cynical Parisian like Favelles. 
This member of a fast set whom Chance made a 
witness of the beginning of this passion was not 
one of those who take adventures of this kind 
tragically. This idyll was to be for him only a 
comedy in which the gay note was given by the 
artlessness of the hero — the outcome of the rough 
naturalness of the hunt and of war. But now 
BrissonnePs pulse which the approach of the 
most terrible death had left so often calm was 
going to beat feverishly at the simple idea that 
this evening, that to-morrow he would see the 
form of this woman unknown to him but so short 
a time before. Yes, during the remaining week 
of Mme. LidbauPs stay his energies were to be 
expended in making resolutions of this import- 
ance: could he go out at the time that he knew 
she was going out? Would he go after breakfast 
on to the veranda of the hotel where it would be 


82 


Two Sisters 


possible to meet her with Baron Favelles? 
Would he stray out near her house with the 
chance of getting a word with little Charlotte? 
Every one of these nothings was going to repre- 
sent to this courageous man a perfect tragedy 
of timidity. 

It was this shyness so absolutely and artlessly 
and frankly sincere which made it impossible the 
first evening to endure the presentation to Mad- 
eleine after the little incident at the station. 
This same shyness had made him in almost a 
savage manner escape during the first interview 
which had followed the meeting of the following 
day. He was not mistaken in imagining that she 
would quell him a little again on the next 
occasion in spite of her charming reception at 
their second meeting by the little stream, a meet- 
ing that was a surprise to him. Had he not let 
himself go on narrating hunting exploits like a 
rival of the illustrious Tartarin, himself the 
most silent of men ordinarily on the subject of 
his own doings? He was not going to be any 
bolder apparently the third meeting with her. 
Twenty-four hours had again passed during 
which he had asked himself if he should be so 
fortunate as to see the young woman, first in the 
morning when he had wandered through the 


Two Sisters 


83 


whole park without catching a glimpse of her 
face, so passionately contemplated the night be- 
fore under those arches of great trees, then 
again in the afternoon when he started to go on 
to the veranda. After lunch Mme. Li£baut 
had appeared before him as he foresaw she 
might, seated next to the Baron Favelles, pro- 
saically occupied in making a part of that pro- 
saic scene which a hotel terrace presents in the 
summer season. She was drinking a simple cup 
of coffee while her old cavalier knight was tast- 
ing a little glass of delicate champagne between 
the puffs of his inveterate cigar. 

They, too, both the old man and the young 
woman, had seen the lover as he w T heeled around 
and disappeared in the avenue. Favelles was 
compelled to comment on this sudden and dis- 
concerting disappearance with some distinctness. 

“Our slayer of lions is decidedly less tamed 
than I should have believed he could be from his 
manners of yesterday. ... He saw you, and 
now look at him making off . . .” 

“What makes you think he has seen us?” asked 
Madeleine correcting the pronoun. 

“You,” Favelles responded. “I repeat it — 
you. . . . Let us have this out now. He can 
not have come in this direction except with the 


84 


Two Sisters 


idea of finding me, for he knows my habits. 
Since he didn’t come, way up to us, it is from 
some motive. . . . And what one? Your 

presence, my dear friend. You embarrass him. 
. . . Remember that he has been accustomed 
during several years to talk to none but ‘colored 
ladies/ as they say in America. This beautiful 
blond hair and this lovely fresh complexion is 
affecting his head a little too much . . 

“You are trying to flatter me.” The young 
woman began shaking her finger at Favelles. 
“Our compact holds always that you owe me 
more discretion . . .” Then she added, mock- 
ingly, perhaps so that he would not guess the 
secret pleasure which the sudden turn of the 
stroller caused her as he was brought back now 
to their side by another right-about-face. “You 
say let us reason. Very well. But you do it very 
badly, my poor baron. Monsieur Brissonnet is 
so little afraid of me that he returns on his steps. 
This time he has seen us both and is coming to- 
ward us whether you acknowledge this or no.” 

Favelles placed his shell monocle securely in 
the frowning arch of his eye so as to observe the 
approach of the young man and also to study the 
attitude of the young woman. She looked at 
him and laughed. He never failed to amuse her. 


Two Sisters 


85 


However wary he might have been he did not 
discover the change of feeling which she experi- 
enced. He spoke aloud, an enigmatical “What 
a child !” while shaking his old head like a con- 
noisseur who can judge on all the emotions of 
life. According to his experience the evident 
awkwardness of his protdg6 appeared supremely 
unskilful when it really was for him once more 
the cleverest of tactics as it was the most un- 
conscious. Madeleine was married and was a 
mother. From every one of her movements there 
emanated an atmosphere of purity. The officer 
had known her but three days and already he 
would have despised himself for even supposing 
that she could ever cease from being a good 
woman, so fully did he understand that this 
goodness and this charm were permeated with 
the deepest virtue, that these exquisite manners 
were the accompaniment of an irreproachable 
delicacy of conscience. But is the certainty that 
one will never be loved a reason for not loving? 
If anything can touch the heart of a woman who 
is faithful to the duties of life, is it not a pas- 
sionate respect, that hesitancy of the lover 
whose spirit of daring is broken, who wishes 
to please and yet is afraid, who makes advances 
only to retire? The torment which he hasn’t the 


86 


Two Sisters 


power to conceal appeases in her that something 
which inspires the instinct of defense awakened 
before his avowed desire. If she bears in an 
intimate recess of her being tender feelings 
which have been stirred, she gives herself reasons 
for not being too severe toward this interest 
which she provokes instead of summoning her 
forces to her defense. She says to herself that 
she has nothing to fear. She may even argue by 
one of those sophisms which are common to the 
proudest natures that this interest is only a too 
emotional admiration, a commencement of 
friendship that is very exalted. Besides, in this 
case was it not all a part of the program as 
imagined by Madeleine, that Brissonnet should 
become a little interested in her so to insure the 
rest? He would see her sister, and thanks to the 
attraction of a resemblance that was so aston- 
ishing as to be almost an identity, this fancy 
would be developed into a serious sentiment for 
that one whom he could marry. Does not the 
smile with which she greets Brissonnet justify 
it all in the eyes of the most severe moralists 
when he finally had dared to salute her? It was 
so frank and charming a smile that the young 
man after having promised himself to leave im- 
mediately through the fear of being indiscreet, 


Two Sisters 


87 


accepted on the contrary the offer of Baron Fa- 
velles to sit at their table. The latter carrying 
out his role of animal trainer with so much more 
enthusiasm since there appeared to be some suc- 
cess, directed the conversation into the same 
channel as on the evening before. 

“Well, well,” he said to Brissonnet, as he 
pointed to the lovely little tableau which the 
angle of the park formed where it terminated in 
a garden of roses, while beyond stretched the 
long line of blue mountains profiled through the 
trees. “Well, you do not regret Africa to-day? 
Ragatz is agreeing with you? . . . You no 

longer have that fatal look that I charged you 
with having when we saw each other after you 
appeared before the committee. Ha ha ! Do you 
remember? . . . Now I will own that it was 
enough to cause it. One might become morose 
at least. . . . You cannot imagine, Madame,” 
he added, addressing himself to Madeleine, “what 
persecutions Colonel Marchand and his com- 
panies have been exposed to on the part of our 
ignoble politicians . . And he was about to 
begin one of his long harangues when the officer 
immediately interrupted. 

“Now don’t weary Madame Lidbaut with my 
grievances, Monsieur le Baron. If I told them 


88 


Two Sisters 


to you at that time it was to throw a light on 
these gentlemen of the committee. As far as it 
concerns myself I have never seen in it but one 
of the natural consequences of my profession as 
a soldier, and if this profession did not consist 
of anything except to get killed, it would be 
within reach of everybody, wouldn’t it? If it 
simply consisted in conquering new territories 
and in defending the old it would be so tempting 
that any heart the least generous would wish no 
other. There are requirements more exacting, 
more severe, and of which one does not under- 
stand the poetry except in making use of them, 
if one may say so. It resides in the daily and 
systematic practice of sacrifice. The soldier 
must be a voluntary sacrifice or he is nothing. 
When the sacrifice has for its theatre the battle- 
ground of Austerlitz or Waterloo, what great 
fortune is that! When sacrifice demands that 
we go disguised into a hostile country to spy, 
and to risk our lives in obscurity — I was going 
to say ignobly — it is a great trial. What soldier 
is there, however, who hesitates? It is again a 
sacrifice to suffer the injustice of the War De- 
partment and to yet remain in the army. . . . 
I judge no one, but every time that I hear of 
their terrible injustices and have had the temp- 


Two Sisters 


89 


tation to become free again I have heard an inner 
voice saying to me that I am a soldier only in 
order that I can devote myself to my country. 
. . . Does a physician who has had cause to 
complain of a patient because of being slandered 
by him, refuse to care for him if he knows the 
patient is in danger?” 

He had turned round toward Mme. Lidbaut 
while saying these last words. They evoked 
again before the young woman the image of her 
husband occupied with his duties at that very 
moment and it might be leaning over the form 
of some patient who was in danger. How 
many times she had heard him also profess this 
doctrine of sacrifice almost in the same terms! 
The confidences of this large-hearted practitioner 
had prepared her for understanding the African 
officer as much as fifty years of Parisian frivolity 
had estranged Favelles. As well was it, too, for 
her that the officer had spoken. She showed it in 
the look that she threw at him which was as it 
were inclusive of the world outside themselves 
while the dandy of 1860 shrugging his shoulders 
replied with the most comical grimace of his ex- 
pressive mouth : 

“All that is very fine and good. But do not 
deny that it is hideous to see uniforms pestered 


90 


Two Sisters 


by frock coats, and I thank the good Lord every 
day for having been a fine fellow of December 
3rd, 1851. It is not a jolly thing to grow old, 
but I awakened well content this morning. . . . 
You all are just as courageous in war as your 
elders but you do embarrass yourself with a lot 
of mystical ideas which you have no need of in 
fighting the enemy or in making fine thrusts 
with the saber and parading in a handsome uni- 
form. . . . This was the only philosophy for 

the officer of my time. Well, well, it was not 
so bad!” 

“Those officers did not serve in a vanquished 
and humiliated army,” Brissonnet responded. 

This short dialogue between the representa- 
tives of two generations — that before the war of 
1870 and the other of to-day — on stirring sub- 
jects of much moment, with the memory of the 
disaster which was not yet avenged and of the 
more recent severe trials, ended by moving Mad- 
eleine profoundly. This great disturbance in 
her was the first of a series of tumults of which 
this conversation and similar ones were to be 
preludes. Madeleine thought so little of the true 
nature of it that when she had once returned to 
the solitude of her villa and had sat down to her 
writing-table where the paper was already out 


Two Sisters 


91 


for her daily letter to her husband, she did not 
have for a moment an idea of keeping silence on 
a detail of this last conversation. Her pen flew 
over the paper reporting each and every one of 
the minutest sayings of Brissonnet. She was so 
entirely innocent that she dwelt on how delight- 
ful the relations of her husband with the officer 
would be if they should become some day friends, 
because of the similarity of their ways of think- 
ing. She informed him besides in this letter that 
Favelles had invited herself and Charlotte on a 
long excursion by carriage on the day after the 
following, and that she had accepted. The cap- 
tain w r as to be one of the party. Their destina- 
tion was to be the narrow^ pass of Luziensteig 
on the Swiss and Austrian frontier, returning 
by the Rhine and Maienfeld. Madeleine but 
little thought while writing out the name of this 
little village that it would serve as a theatre to 
a scene which came very near to being a tragedy. 
Chance, which at moments favors our imprudent 
schemes with a complaisance in w r hich one has 
difficulty in not discerning a fatality, was going 
to advance suddenly their relations in a way 
which a long period of time would never have 
accomplished. This episode was to be equivalent 
to months of acquaintanceship. 


92 


Two Sisters 


Whoever has taken these roads on the out- 
skirts of Ragatz on a beautiful day will under- 
stand how deep the impressions on the memory 
would be of this country which you journey 
through and how it would kindle the imagina- 
tion of anyone who was naturally romantic and 
already deeply stirred in her inmost being. All 
along Madeleine was forced to see in an ob- 
scure recess of her reverie the serious profile 
of the African officer as it stood out against 
that admirable horizon. He was sitting on the 
front seat of the landau and looking in turn 
at all the varied scenes of nature which are 
here sublime, and when he believed himself 
unobserved, at the face of the woman opposite. 
She had been a stranger to him the week before, 
and now he w<as ready to trust his life into her 
hands. He was silent. Madeleine herself, as if 
gladdened by the charm of these hours, of the 
soft sky and pure air, of these fresh woods all 
around, was very talkative, ofttimes with her 
daughter, who was the life of the party, and 
ofttimes with Favelles. The “old dandy,” who 
had sent on ahead a servant, styled a valet by 
him for the last fifteen years, to prepare a 
lunch in one of the inns along the road, was 
enjoying the ride with the artlessness of a school- 


Two Sisters 


93 


boy on a vacation. For was he not the organizer 
of the expedition? He was quite content at the 
work he was accomplishing and kept himself 
busy recollecting a prodigality of anecdotes. 
One succeeded another. It was known to be his 
mania. He told extraordinary things about 
great swells of his youth, of the duels of that 
madman Machault, who one day fought with 
a comrade in his club over two billiard balls 
joined in a way impossible to break. He told 
about the somnambulism of one of the most Pari- 
sian of Russians, Serge Werekiew, who at the 
time of the Belle Helene got up at the dinner 
hour, arrived at about ten o’clock at Bignon’s. 
There he had a silver soup-tureen brought in 
which he himself washed the plates, ate an enor- 
mous meal, the only one in twenty-four hours, 
then went up to the “ Jockey Club,” where he 
played whist until morning, all in his sleep. But 
of what use to recall these piquant anecdotes 
which recited by this grotesque character were 
to contrast so fantastically with the environment 
of Swiss mountains and of forests. They had, 
indeed, for Madeleine and Brissonnet the charm 
of being absolutely foreign to their secret im- 
pressions. Nothing in the anecdotes could touch 
that sensitiveness which already was made so 


94 


Two Sisters 


alive by a new-born passion in the young man ; 
nothing could awaken the sleeping prudence of 
the young woman. This combination of circum- 
stances was making the excursion perfectly de- 
lightful for all four whom the landau was car- 
rying easily up and down the soft inclines, when 
a half hour after their start back occurred the 
episode wliich already has been alluded to. It 
w 7 as simple, sudden and terrible, one of those 
accidents wliich, always possible and never fore- 
seen, break through the order of things. They 
threaten us at any moment in the simplest ac- 
tions of our lives, and w T e are as frightened by 
them as if w 7 e had never understood “how dan- 
gerous it is to live.” 

The carriage w 7 as to go through, to reach the 
Rhine on the w^ay back to Ragatz, the peaceful 
little gray town of Maienfeld. It is a town of 
large roomy houses with roofs prettily hollowed 
out, terraced gardens and luxuriant orchards. 
Baron Favelles knew 7 there a shop of antiquities 
w 7 here he ordered the landau to stop. Mme. Lid- 
baut consented to get out at the urgent request 
of the vain baron, who longed to complete his 
triumphs of the afternoon by showing off his 
knowledge of bric-a-brac. Brissonnet followed. 
The little girl, wrho had walked about at differ- 


Two Sisters 


95 


ent times as they were ascending the hills that 
she might gather flowers in the woods, asked for 
permission to remain in the carriage. The driver 
said he would drive the horses, while waiting, 
up and down the principal street of the village, 
so as to keep them on their mettle. The three 
shoppers had not been in the store more than 
five minutes, however, looking over the various 
trinkets which justified the bold inscription, 
“Helvetian Art,” when of a sudden piercing cries 
from without gave them a terrible start. With 
that rapidity of movement which belongs to the 
man of action Brissonnet had stepped to the 
doorway. Mme. Lidbaut and Favelles looked 
after him with surprise which changed very soon 
into terrible alarm when they saw him outside. 
They themselves looked into the square in time 
to see an automobile disappearing at full speed 
in one direction and from the other, tearing 
along at a maddening pace, their own landau. 
Lying back on his seat was the driver pulling 
with hopeless effort on the leaders. He was 
trying in vain to restrain the two horses which 
had been maddened by the passage of the auto- 
mobile so very near to them and which at first 
had reared, then started on a mad gallop. Char- 
lotte was holding on to the cushions paralyzed 


96 


Two Sisters 


with terror. Already, however, a man had 
thrown himself before the team. Catching hold 
of the off-horse’s bit with one hand, he let him- 
self be dragged along without slackening hold, 
tearing the mouth of the animal with such vigor 
that it began to struggle instead of continuing 
its mad flight. The other horse, from the force 
of this abrupt stop, had slipped down. He rolled 
over in his traces, giving furious kicks smashing 
everything. But what did it matter? The car- 
riage had been stopped, the child saved. 

Some minutes later the hero of this episode, 

who was none other than Captain Brissonnet, 

was picked up between the two animals, having 

received a kick which had broken his arm. His 

face was covered with blood, one of the harness 

buckles having lacerated his brow. And the 

mother of the child whose life he had saved at 

the risk of his own was beside him, thankful in 

her heart that her baby had been saved from 

almost certain death and full of supplication 

that this man to whom she had dreamed to give 

one day the name of brother should suffer no 
* 

lasting injury. Her anxiety, the ardor of her 
prayer, her joy when the village physician had 
been hastily called and pronounced it a simple 
fracture with bruises — all ought to have in- 


Two Sisters 


97 


formed her that a very different sentiment than 
that of a future sister-in-law was stirring within 
her. She ought to have read at last the truth of 
the feeling that she was already inspiring in the 
look with which Brissonnet received her when, 
as he came to himself, in the pharmacy where 
he had been carried, he found her leaning over 
his improvised couch. Her face was all solici- 
tude, overspread with pleasure at seeing him at 
last awaken. Unable to express to her the emo- 
tion which seized him he raised his good arm 
and caressed the child’s hair. She was standing 
near her rescuer and, being seized with a trans- 
port of affection, was embracing him without 
regard to the blood that was all over him. 

“You will soil your gown, Mademoiselle,” he 
said in a tone of soft banter, “and your mother 
will scold you.” 

“While waiting here,” Favelles spoke up, “it 
is necessary to think of taking you back to Ra- 
gatz so as to have your arm set as it should be. 
You make too good use of yourself to be careless 
about keeping you intact. . . . But, Madame 
Lidbaut, what is the matter with you?” For 
Madeleine was leaning against the wall, pale as 
death, and Favelles went to her support. “It is 
nothing,” she answered him, “it is but the reac- 


98 


Two Sisters 


tion of fear,” and she sat down. She reached 
out and drew Charlotte to her, but she did not 
observe that the blood from Brissonnet’s wound 
which was on the child’s dress reddened her 
fingers. The officer, watching her, saw it and 
closed his eyes, unable longer to endure seeing 
this living symbol of his love. 


CHAPTER FIVE. 

FOUR MONTHS LATER. 

Four months had rolled by since the day when 
Brissonnet risked his life to save that of little 
Charlotte Lidbaut under the agonized eyes of 
the mother. Four months also had passed since 
she reddened her delicate fingers in the blood 
which escaped from his wound. Since Madame 
Lidbaut had left Ragatz six days after the res- 
cue, without seeing him again, the idyl sketched 
out by her in the park under the cluster of wil- 
lows consequently had had no other scenes. But 
the last one sufficed for her to go away from the 
little Swiss village with the image of this officer 
graven more deeply in her memory than if their 
meetings had been repeated and prolonged dur- 
ing weeks, nay, even years. Under any other 
circumstances, her virtue would have been 
alarmed at her thinking so much about a 
stranger, but the pretense of motherly appre- 
ciation permitted her to nourish a supreme illu- 
sion on the nature of this memory. Accordingly, 
there was no scruple when once installed in 

99 


100 


Two Sisters 


Paris, in following the plan conceived that first 
evening when Chance had brought herself and 
sister into the presence of Brissonnet on the 
platform of the little Ragatz station. Four 
months had been sufficient for this design, at 
first so vague, to be fixed in conditions that 
would be tedious to explain in detail. How this 
gentle woman went about sharpening the curi- 
osity of Agathe; what feelings Brissonnet him- 
self had obeyed when he presented himself on 
his return at the Li^bauts’ and afterwards when 
he accepted the invitation to call on the young 
widow still more often than on Madeleine; what 
emotion of a very different order had caused the 
admission of this favorite of Colonel Marchand 
into the little world of the physician and Ma- 
dame Mdris would take pages of this story to 
reveal. But is not the real history of almost all 
love affairs contained in the story of their be- 
ginning and their ending? If the reader is still 
wishing to refer to the sketch which served as a 
frontispiece and a peaceful one to this sad story, 
let him imagine those two who were walking up 
and down at the Ragatz station seated now, after 
nearly four months, opposite each other in front 
of one of the first grate fires of the year. It is 
an afternoon in late November, and they are 


Two Sisters 


101 


sitting in the little drawing-room of the house 
which Dr. Li^baut had built in the rue Spontini. 
A gray sky thick with clouds from which snow 
already wafted in a half certain manner dark- 
ened the upper halves of the windows covered 
in the lower part by curtains made of great 
squares of thread lace which the pretty fancy 
of Madeleine had copied and she herself had 
made from Gothic designs : an unicorn, a woman 
riding an ambling nag, a figure of Death holding 
up before another figure a mirror, a figure of 
Fortune standing by a wheel. Everything in 
this room, contrived so as to be sheltered from 
the great waiting room of patients who came 
for consultation, revealed the refined taste of the 
young woman. A soft harmony which existed 
everywhere among the fine old-fashioned furnish- 
ings emphasized the secret correspondence of the 
room with its inhabitant. The portraits which 
were hanging on the walls and the photographs 
on the tables, the numerous books placed within 
reach, the desk prepared with writing material 
behind a folding screen, trinkets dispersed about 
here and there, flowers bunched in vases, gave 
the appearance of a room much used and a some- 
thing that was deeply personal which is for- 
gotten no more than the expression of a face. 


102 


Two Sisters 


The designer of this arrangement “in pale pink 
and faded blue, in dull red and faint green/’ 
as Whistler would have said, was lying half 
stretched out in one of the armchairs. 

She was dressed in a house-dress — a kind of 
tea-gown of soft mauve silk and lace. She had, 
as was always her chief beauty, that heavy mass 
of blond hair with its chestnut shadings, dressed 
in its usual manner, the same easy grace and 
suppleness of beauty, the same blue eyes whose 
look fell on one like a caress. But her cheeks 
were a little hollowed ; her complexion had 
paled; a nervousness had come into her smile; 
her form had become more slender and mel- 
lowed, as it were, and her eyes had no longer 
the transparent gaiety of former days. A 
thought was hidden in their farthest depths, 
which must have been painful, judging by the 
weariness which seemed to affect this woman’s 
whole being. 

Mme. de M6ris — she also had changed. She 
continued to resemble the younger one in that 
amazing degree which Madeleine had made the 
foundation of all her deductions when she plan- 
ned to turn aside on to this sister the interest 
which her admirer of Ragatz had for her. The 
identical shade of hair, the same color eyes, 


Two Sisters 


103 


the striking similarity of features, might have 
caused them almost always to be taken the one 
for the other, except that the elder since that 
afternoon four months ago had grown more ani- 
mated, awakened, quickened. She had no longer 
the discontented mouth of the embittered woman 
who is going to grow old without interesting 
herself in anything except in grievances from an 
offended self-love. She had growm, she had lived 
through the hope of a fuller life, through the 
admiration of the man she loved. Very strong 
impressions and of a very different nature had 
certainly left their marks on the one and the 
other during this interval. . . . Madeleine 

was struggling against these impressions, what- 
ever they were, a fact wdiich was too apparent 
w 7 hen once recognized. She suffered under them 
without consenting to their pressure, while her 
sister Agathe yielded almost with fervor. The 
first had the look of a woman whose heart had 
been taken unawares by a feeling which she re- 
pulsed; the other, on the contrary, seemed to be 
cloaked w r ith pride and the assurance of an 
avowed passion. Was she not free to make love 
without diminishing her self-respect — a hope 
that the mother of Charlotte could not even con- 
ceive of without despising herself. There was 


104 


Two Sisters 


yet between them full another difference. As 
soon as Mme. de Mdris had begun to experience 
love she had told her sister of it. She had so 
little spared her confidante that Madeleine knew 
that the object of the love which suddenly ex- 
panded the heart of the young widow was no 
other than that one of whom Madeleine had 
written to her sister : “I have found for you the 
husband you permitted me to look for — Captain 
Brissonnet.” 

Madeleine Liebaut on the contrary had em- 
ployed all her energy to conceal even the least 
sign of agitation which possessed her, and why 
is easily understood. A very virtuous woman 
— and she was that in the fullest sense of the 
word, in which is implied the virtues that a man 
wishes his mother to have, his sister, his wife, 
his daughter, every one whom he loves, every one 
whom he respects — a very virtuous woman par- 
dons with difficulty any omission however involun- 
tary to conjugal fidelity: dreams against which 
she fights — but how they return; to which she 
dare not yield — but they are none the less there ; 
the quivering of the soul in a certain person’s 
presence, a melancholy during his absence. Mad- 
eleine had returned from Kagatz without recog- 
nizing that she was not interested in Brissonnet 


Two Sisters 


105 


solely as an unhappy hero, as the rescuer of her 
daughter, as a possible husband for her sister. 
But now she knew only too well the true name of 
this sympathy for the rapid growth of which she 
had found so many excuses, the evidence of 
which consumed her with such shame that she 
would have died rather than to confess it to her 
husband — above all to her sister. Not on re- 
flection had the knowledge come to her, but sud- 
denly, instinctively, it had flashed upon her — a 
culmination, as it were, of half-recognized im- 
pressions and stifled yet daring feelings. 

She, the wife of a husband so loyal as Li^baut, 
she, the mother of so adorable a child as Char- 
lotte, she to love another, and this one no other 
than the one she had introduced into her sister’s 
life! The situation was overwhelming and she 
felt herself held in leashes, bound, struggling in 
a cage through the bars of which she could see 
so lucidly, so intently. Fortunately he was never 
to suspect the feeling he inspired. How many 
times during the last few weeks the unhappy 
Woman had discovered herself all a-tremble, fear- 
ing lest Agathe might be coming that moment to 
say, “He has proposed to me and I have told him 
yes.” She had honorably struggled to forbid 
herself thinking of this man who ought to be and 


106 


Two Sisters 


was nothing to her — but in vain. An irresistible 
and constant anxiety impelled her on all oc- 
casions to wonder what he himself felt for her, 
what enigma was hidden under this attention 
equally divided between the two sisters, and 
equally respectful. For the African officer had 
acted as if instead of being accustomed to the 
strategy among the brush in a wild country he 
had passed his entire youth studying manoeuvres 
in the old game of love-making. He had let un- 
certainty hover over his true feelings. Which 
did he love, Madeleine or Agathe? When Ma- 
dame Lffibaut thought from some sign that it was 
she, delirium seized her and then remorse, a 
criminal joy and then terror. When she believed 
that it was Agathe he loved she was forced to 
say to herself that she ought to rejoice with all 
that force of affection which she had for her 
sister. But this became in her a kind of sharp 
suffering which pained so that it seemed that the 
life within her was going to cease. When she 
sank down all pale and trembling this afternoon 
before the fire it was because Mme. de Mdris had 
arrived during the short visit of our old ac- 
quaintance, Baron Favelles. At first glance 
Madeleine had discovered about Agathe an ex- 
citement the cause of which she was to know as 


Two Sisters 


107 


soon as the good baron took his departure. As 
usual, the baron had an anecdote to relate, the 
effect of which, however, he sought in vain. “I 
am leaving now,” he said, “so as not to draw 
on myself the same remark that a young French 
diplomat got while dining at Osborne. . . . 

Our compatriot was very merry and told after 
dinner a story which he thought was very amus- 
ing. Silence throughout the drawing-room ! They 
were waiting for her Majesty to start the laugh. 
After a mortal minute she let fall the simple 
words : ‘We are not amused.’ ” 

“At last!” said Madeleine when the comical 
figure of the old beau had disappeared behind 
the draperies. “I thought he would never go. 
1 dislike having no more patience with him, for 
truly he gave me this summer real proofs of 
friendship.” 

“At Ragatz I was affected in quite the same 
way before you were, was I not?” responded 
Agathe. “You will probably accuse me of hav- 
ing the spirit of contrariness,” she continued, 
“when I tell you that I find him less tedious 
here than he was there. . . . And then he 

introduced you to — you know ” 

She smiled while saying these last words — 
words spoken artlessly bv Mme. de M6ris but 


108 


Two Sisters 


which brought a heavier shadow than was al- 
ready there into the eyes of the other. The sense 
in which they were both spoken and received 
brought out the actual position of the two sisters. 
The cause which made Agathe’s life easier, less 
constrained, less nervous, was precisely the same 
which explained the change of disposition in 
Madame Li^baut. Since the latter recognized 
the cause and the other was still ignorant of it, 
all interviews between them became the occa- 
sion of misunderstanding, unintelligible to the 
elder and painfully felt by the younger sister. 
Agathe had no idea of how quickly Madeleine’s 
heart began to beat at her last words, nor of the 
emotion with which her secret rival alluded to 
the common subject of their thoughts. . . . 

“Is there any news to tell me from that quar- 
ter? It seemed to me when you came in that 
you were much vexed not to find me alone.” 

“I was a little,” said Agathe, “but since Fa- 
velles has understood and left it is all right. 
. . . Besides, you were not mistaken. I have 

a great favor to ask of you,” she went on after a 
pause during which a singular agitation seemed 
to dominate her. “I hesitated a long time be- 
cause it concerns a step which is rather unusual ! 


Two Sisters 


109 


But 1 believe that you will decide, as I have, 
that it has become necessary.” 

“You know so well, dear, that I am always 
ready to help you,” Madeleine replied, pressing 
Agathe’s hand. Her own was so hot that Agathe 
felt the heat through her glove. 

“You have fever?” she said. “Aren’t you 
well?” 

“I?” said Madeleine. “What an idea! 1 am 
a little tired because of not sleeping last night. 
I was so imprudent as to read a part of the 
night. It is nothing,” she added, reddening a 
little. During these last few weeks it had fre- 
quently happened that Mme. de Mdris had looked 
at her inquisitively as if amazed at the change in 
her appearance. But if the young widow had 
had even the vaguest suspicion that there might 
be another cause of the evident uneasiness of her 
sister besides physical weariness — and such a 
cause! — would she have spoken so freely the 
name that soon rose to her lips? 

“I shall let Lidbaut know and he will scold 
you,” she said; then, going on with her confi- 
dence, “you have already guessed that it con- 
cerns Brissonnet. ... I attended last even- 
ing the Theatre Frangais. You remember I 
spoke of it here at five o’clock tea before him. 


110 


Two Sisters 


Scarcely had I entered my box when, glancing 
down into the house, whom do I see seated in 
an orchestra chair, with a look on his face of 
being a thousand leagues — more or less — from 
the performance, but our friend!” 

“Ah, he had the same fancy as you, then, for 
hearing this piece everybody is talking so much 
about,” responded Madeleine. 

“It is getting to be a little too customary a 
thing, though,” rejoined Agathe. “At the opera, 
last Friday, it was the same story; the same 
story at the vaudeville on Monday. If only he 
came to call on me in my box, as would be quite 
natural, one would not remark upon it. . . . 

But he remains there in his seat, motionless, and 
when he believes he is not observed looks at me 
with his opera glasses in that dreamy, indefinite 
way. . . .” 

“It is a proof that you intimidate him,” re- 
sponded Madeleine. She had leaned forward to 
poke the fire, while her sister gave an account 
of the incidents of the night before — a very sig- 
nificant explanation of the incidents also of the 
three other days. What had she dreamed at 
Ragatz if not that the young man should fall 
captive to the charms of her sister whom, in 
spite of their differences, she had always so 


Two Sisters 


111 


adored? By what illogical and blameworthy 
caprice of her feelings did each new proof of the 
officer’s interest for Madame de M6ris cause her 
pain? But the lovely and courageous woman 
did not admit of this suffering and once more 
she summoned the energy to add: “Yes, it is 
proof that you embarrass him and that he loves 
you. . . .” 

“Loves me?” Agathe was shaking her head 
while she repeated these last two words in a 
tone of doubt. “But if he loved me,” she in- 
sisted, “would he not say to himself that his 
attitude is such as to make himself talked about 
and in time make me talked about? Would he 
not recognize that it might provoke criticism, 
that it does provoke criticism? . . . It is of 

just this very thing that I have come to tell you. 
Last night I had in my box Madame Ethorel. 
You know how evil-minded she is. She pardons 
no one her own would-be forty years which I 
venture to say she has had for at least the last 
decade. ‘Can that be Commander Brissonnet 
there in the fifth row of the orchestra?’ she sud- 
denly asked of me. ‘Why, yes,’ I answered, mak- 
ing believe that I had not seen him until she 
pointed him out. ‘You are very well ’acquainted 
with him, I believe?’ continued she. ‘He was 


112 


Two Sisters 


introduced to my sister at the Springs/ I said, 
‘and I have met him at her house.’ ‘Ah,’ she 
replied simply. Then, after a, silence: ‘You know 
how I love you, my dear Agathe, so permit me 
to give you a little advice. Hold this man a little 
at a distance. He belongs to that class of lovers 
which I name the seeing kind / ‘What do you 
mean by that?’ I insisted in my turn. ‘Nothing 
except what I say,’ she replied. ‘Hold him at 
a distance.’ Words of this style in this mouth — 
you' know as well as I what they mean : the name 
of Brissonnet has been spoken in connection with 
mine or will be. They are gossiping, or they are 
going to gossip.” 

“Madame Ethorel is a malicious woman, that 
is all,” responded Madeleine, “and you cannot 
hold M. Brissonnet responsible for the shabby 
words of an old coquette who is soured on all 
feelings which she no longer inspires.” 

“I hold him responsible for nothing, under- 
stand me,” Agathe said. “You and I have al- 
ways felt in receiving him that he did not belong 
exactly to fashionable society. He hasn’t its 
selfishness, neither has he its prudence. It isn’t 
in Africa that one gets the sad experience that 
slanders of the drawing-room give you. How- 
ever, own up that you would be the first to 


Two Sisters 


113 


blame me should I, with all this experience, let 
this situation be prolonged which risks com- 
promising me first of all, and then ” A 

trembling which was not affected came into her 
voice. “And then,” she repeated, “which makes 
me suffer.” 

“Then your state of mind has changed during 
the last few days?” questioned her sister. “Yes,” 
she went on, after a pause, “if you love him as 
you said you could love, are you not able to 
suffer the evidences of his love for you? And 
he does love you. His conduct is inexplicable 
otherwise.” 

“And do you think it explicable if he loves 
me,” resumed Agathe quickly, “that he never 
attempts to speak to me in private, nor to be- 
come more intimate? . . . When we meet 

at the theatre, you know his attitude. When 
he comes to call at my house, and finds me alone, 
he stays scarcely twenty minutes, and it is an 
effort on his part to sustain the most common- 
place conversation, which is such a contrast to 
the way we have seen him in other circum- 
stances — so full of spirit, so quick at repartee, 
altogether so brilliant. If he comes when there 
is already some one there you might say that he 
was glad of it, for he stays if it is convenient 


114 


Two Sisters 


until the moment that the caller departs. Gen- 
erally he goes along wth him. ... I am not 
one of those fools who imagine that as soon as 
a man looks at them in a certain way that they 
have inspired “la grande passion Neither am 
I so full of false modesty that I deny being loved 
against all evidence. I confess that M. Brisson- 
net acts sometimes in such a way as to make one 
believe that he is attracted to me, but I tell you 
that there are others that completely belie this 
first hypothesis. And for me this is the touch- 
stone: am I free or not? It is quite natural for 
a man to hesitate before declaiming himself to 
a woman whom he cannot marry, but when a 
man loves a widow who hasn’t the slightest rea- 
son for not wanting to begin her life again, and 
when she shows him the sympathy which I show, 
there is no use making out it’s embarrassment. 
Either a man asks her hand in marriage, or 
breaks the subject through some one else, so as 
to try the ground before taking a definite step. 
He has Favelles and some one better still: he 
has you. Are you not the confidante planned for 
such a message? Now, has he mentioned it to 
Favelles? No. . . . Has he spoken to you? 

No, again. . . . What conclusion do you 

want me to draw?” 


Two Sisters 


115 


“That he perhaps finds you too rich for him,” 
answered Madeleine, “just that. He could well 

have this scruple with his character ” 

“He would not have let himself come to see 
us so often in that case,” Agathe interrupted her, 
shaking her head. “He has always known that 
I am rich and his pride has never objected to 
that. He has believed — and he is right in so 
believing — that we were under obligations to him 
in receiving a man of his valor, and for my part 
I have always thought myself so. Consequently, 
I have always so conducted myself. He is intel- 
ligent enough to have seen this and to have 
drawn conclusions quite contrary to those you 
suppose. . . . Besides,” she added after a 

silence, “I do not agree with you on the manner 
in which a high-minded person judges on differ- 
ences of fortune between those who are in love 
with each other, and if you reflect a moment, 
you will think as I do. If there is a real base- 
ness of heart in the mixture of simulated feeling 
and real calculation, apparent passion, and mean 
interest that makes up a marriage for money, 
there is also a certain vulgarity of nature in 
such a scruple as you suggest might be his. A 
hero like Louis Brissonnet does not think of the 
dowry question when he feels a true passion for 


116 


Two Sister* 


a woman. He ignores it, and that is the only 
true way. . . . No, if he does not declare 

himself it is because of something else.” 

“But what?” said Madeleine, feeling herself 
blush. She had also felt, and if she had dared 
she might have thought, that there was some 
mystery surrounding the contradictory actions 
of this man who exercised such a spell over her 
thoughts. While Agathe was talking, she kept 
her eyes fixedly on Madeleine, and the latter 
remembered with a start as it were of another 
state of consciousness that had been dreaming 
of other glances that had taken her unawares 
and had exercised that irresistible and profound 
quivering of the woman who loves and who says 
within herself, “I am loved.” But these im- 
pressions had been so quick, so transitory ; Bris- 
sonnet had been so reserved and full of respect 
for her and apparently so indifferent; he had 
appeared so visibly occupied with her sister that 
she had each time said to herself : What foolish- 
ness! I am dreaming.” Now once more she 
refused to listen to the answer which that inner 
voice of the heart made to her own question. 
She listened while Agathe went on. 

“What? ... I do not know. There are 
moments when I wonder if he is tied up in a 


Two Sisters 


117 


liaison which he dare not break off. How could 
I resent it? He was so lonely and unhappy when 
he returned from Africa. He might have met a 
woman who came into his life not enough for 
him to consent to marry, but enough to consider 
himself bound. . . . Whatever it may be, this 
uncertainty can not last any longer, and the 
favor which I came to ask of you is simply to 
help me to end it.” 

“Me?” cried Mme. Li^baut with an emotion 
that she did not succeed in concealing and which 
anticipated the request that made her frame the 
question, “Would you like me to go between you? 
. . . But how could I.” 

“You have not altogether guessed my mean- 
ing,” responded Agathe. “It isn’t a matter of 
carrying a message from me to him. You are 
my sister and it was you that first knew Mon- 
sieur Brissonnet, and introduced him to me. 
Imagine if you had found out by some one person 
than myself the malicious remarks of Madame 
Ethorel! Wouldn’t it be natural for you to be 
uneasy? Isn’t it natural, on the other hand, that 
esteeming him as you do yourself, you should 
judge him absolutely incapable of doing any- 
thing whatever to compromise a woman, at least 
if he realizes it? . . . I ask you, my dear 


118 


Two Sisters 


Madeleine, to act as you wmild yourself act if 
the conditions were such as I have just told 
you. Would you hesitate to have Monsieur Bris- 
sonnet come so as to inform him of the com- 
ments of certain of your friends? There is no 
doubt about the outcome of such an interview. 
Either he does not love me, and in that case he 
will excuse himself and I shall see no more of 
him, or he does love me and in his doubt will 
disclose his feelings and want to know what to 
hope. . . . Clever as I know you are he will 
tell you all. . . . Oh, my little Made, do not 
refuse me this! It is you who planned for me 
to know him; you tempted me. Without you I 
should never have thought of making over my 
life. I was so resolved to remain free. You 
overcame my scruples. You made me accept this 
idea of a second marriage. You owe me this 
assistance. ... I know that it is a very deli- 
cate and embarrassing matter. . . . But who 
can approach him with it if not you? And the 
question must be broached by some one. I tell 
you again, I cannot suffer so much from the un- 
certainty. My reputation is a great deal to me, 
and there is something which is of still more im- 
portance than my reputation : it is the peace of 
my heart. It is not so deeply taken hold of but 


Two Sisters 


119 


that I may have the strength to renounce this 
dream if it is shown me that it is only a dream. 
But I must know — I must ...” She had 
been speaking with increasing fervor, which 
proved how much she had changed since that 
moment when on the platform of the Ragatz sta- 
tion she had declared her intention of eternal 
widowhood. Then she had said : “My existence 
is such as I have wished, and my pride sustains 
me ...” And at that very instant by the 
irony of destiny was being led to that little sta- 
tion the very being before whom her pride must 
so soon fall. Another person had changed still 
more: it was she to whom the young widow de- 
sirous of becoming again a young wife was ad- 
dressing this pressing appeal. In proportion as 
the elder had laid out the details of the errand 
with which she wished to charge Madeleine, the 
heart of the latter had become shaken with an 
agitation more and more insufferable. The in- 
terview which Agathe was urging her to was pro- 
jected in her imagination in every intolerable 
detail. She saw herself receiving this man she 
loved — for she loved, and how much she would 
discover to her sorrow! It would be in this same 
room. He would stand there, breathing, full of 
life, looking at her, shaking her violently by his 


120 


Two Sisters 


simple presence, ignorant of it, never to know it, 
since she wished to continue to respect herself 
and him, and to remain truly faithful to the 
good man whose name she bore. Faithfulness to 
this request of her sister’s required that Mad- 
eleine do still more. It was necessary for her to 
urge her interlocutor to an avowal of love for 
another. Could she hear him, would she have 
the strength to hear him say : “I love Madame de 
Meris?” If, however, Brissonnet did not love 
Agathe? If another declaration mounted to the 
lips of the officer, and obliged him to cease his 
calls at the homes of the two sisters, because he 
loved the one whom he was not permitted to 
marry? . . . And wffiat w r ould become of this 
woman taken alone so unawares? She wrould 
have to hear words, the very utterance of wffiich 
in her presence w-as a crime against a sworn 
faith, against the fireside which for such a long 
time had satisfied her, to w r hich she was bound 
by so many ties — the very best and deepest of her 
being, by her tenderness for her young son and 
daughter, and by her real affection for their 
father? Was it not treason already just to feel 
even though it was to fight this passionate sym- 
pathy for him? . . . No. Madeleine could 

not be the bearer of such a message as her sister 


Two Sisters 


121 


wished to send. Such an interview was too pain- 
ful and too dangerous. Had she not both the 
right to decline this suffering and the duty to 
avoid the peril in it? But how would she word 
this refusal, the true reason for which had to be 
entirely concealed? Alas! What words could 
have been more tell-tale than the constrained 
ones with which she evasively responded? 

“You see no other means of finding out. . . .” 

“Do you not think that this plan risks coming 
out contrary to your own wishes? . . . ” 

“Why? I do not understand,” questioned 
Agathe. 

“Why? Because for a person to open such a 
subject who is so closely related as I am to you is 
very plainly to offer your hand.” 

“But afterwards? ...” replied Mme de 
M6ris quickly. “I never thought that one had 
vanity in matter of love. If M. Brissonnet loves 
me, I say, this step will go straight to the heart 
just on account of this. If he take offense at 
it, this is probably w 7 hat you fear. He does not 
love me. ... I shall know which and this is 
what I w r ish to know. What could happen? That 
he might spread the word that I wanted to marry 
him and that it wasn’t according to his own 
taste? . . . ” 


122 


Two Sisters 


“He tell that! ...” protested Madeleine, 
“He is incapable of it!” 

“Very well then,” continued Agathe. “No, 
there is no other way and you will not refuse to 
speak to him. . . . Unless you may have, by 
this refusal, a reason which you do not tell 
me ... ” 

“To you?” said Mme. Li^baut, “What reason 
do you think there may be? ... ” Her sister, 
who was looking at her fixedly, could see the 
blood flow suddenly to her pale cheeks, then flow 
back, leaving them paler than before, as if the 
heart of the young woman had contracted spas- 
modically under the fire of this question. It 
wasn’t the first time that the elder had been sur- 
prised to see signs of internal disturbance in her 
sister. She had not sought to explain them. The 
cut and dried ideas she had formed on the char- 
acter of Madeleine interposed between her and 
any immediate observations, as so often is the 
case in family relations. But this minute for the 
first time in one of those paroxysms of sudden 
lucidity which passion finds at its service, a sus- 
picion crossed her mind. It was but a flash and 
she immediately rejected the thoughts that as- 
sailed her, not however without undergoing a 
kind of shuddering. 


Two Sisters 


123 


“None, in fact, none. . . . Yon seemed a 

little strange a minute ago when ...” 

“When?” Madeleine insisted. 

“There is no longer any when,” replied Mme. 
de Mdris, “but I beg of you, Madeleine, not to 
continue to stand out. I should consider it,” and 
her voice reached a strange depth, “as doing me 
a great unkindness ...” 

“I shall speak to Monsieur Brissonnet,” re- 
sponded Madeleine, after a very short moment 
of supreme struggle during which she could 
not prevent her eyelids from quivering nerv- 
ously, and her mouth from trembling. Terri- 
fied before this vivid flash of sudden clear- 
ness that lighted up the countenance of Agathe 
and before the menace of these last words, 
she had believed that an immediate submission 
would remove a defiance that would make her 
cup of misery too full. She did not suspect 
that she deepened still more the feeling of 
mystery in the mind of her sister, whose secret 
though unwilling rival she was. A question 
which at this moment would have been too pain- 
ful for her to bear, was spared her by the chance 
arrival of a visitor, none other than precisely 
that Mme. Ethorel, whose malicious remark the 


124 


Two Sisters 


evening before had served as a pretext for 
Agathe’s request. 

The latter had only time to say to her sister 
during the few minutes that elapsed between the 
entrance of the servant to ask if Madame was 
receiving and the arrival of the visitor. 

“You will speak to him, you say, but when?” 

“To-morrow,” returned Madeleine, “I shall 
write him that he may come at two o’clock.” 

“Thank you,” said Agathe, and as the steps of 
Mme. Ethorel coming upstairs were heard, she 
continued, “I shall leave you alone. The ‘faded 
beauty’ is coming to tell you that I am comprom- 
ising myself, you will see! . . . Well, it is 

necessary to have it over.” 


CHAPTER SIX. 


JEALOUSY IS CONTAGIOUS. 

The “faded beauty,” as the young widow 
styled her, w r ith the insolence of her thirty years, 
had been there hardly a quarter of an hour when 
she was fully launched into the midst of the 
recital of comments that “society” was making 
on the officer’s avowed attentions to the elder 
sister. The indiscreet woman had, of course, no 
notion of the pain every word was inflicting on 
the already wounded, sensibility of Madeleine, 
but who of us but fails to divine another’s suf- 
ferings, even of our nearest friends? Crucified 
by Mme. Ethorel’s remarks, inconsiderate as 
they were hateful, Madeleine on her part did 
not suspect that at the same moment Agathe 
was receiving similar stunning blows nor from 
whom they came. Had she known she would 
have felt terror in her very marrow. 

Mme. de Mdris had done as she had said she 
would do. She had left Madeleine’s almost as 
soon as the visitor arrived, not without, however, 
125 


126 


Two Sisters 


the exchange of those false caresses of two so- 
ciety women who saw each other last evening, 
who will meet again to-morrow and who delight 
in abusing each other as soon as they have sep- 
arated. Ordinarily Agathe attached no more im- 
portance to those little drawing-room grimaces 
than they merited, but when one is fretted by 
certain suspicions one hears with more difficulty 
the falsity of such remarks however hackneyed 
and at bottom offensive they may be, for behind 
them real treacheries may take shelter. When 
underneath the “dear” and “darling” of two 
friends who smile tenderly at each other there is 
evidence that there are petty little hatreds all 
ready to scratch and bite — evidence that one 
smiles at as rather diverting in hours when our 
observation is indulgent — it appears suddenly as 
a frightful thing if a little sign has informed 
your unsuspecting mind of a treachery in some 
one you really love. The idea of one universal lie 
around your blindness makes you shudder. It 
was just this impression that Agathe experienced 
without yet realizing the cause while descending 
the staircase of her sister’s house. 

“How one is deceived all the same!” she said 
to herself. “Who would believe to see Madame 
Ethorel embrace me as she does every time we 


Two Sisters 


127 


meet, that as soon as the door closes she would 
heap slander on me? . . . God knows what 

insinuations she is devoting herself to this in- 
stant! ... On the other hand so much the 
better! She is doing me a real service. Mad- 
eleine will find out that I did not exaggerate. 
How necessary for her to speak to Louis, and 
right now ! . . . ” She called Brissonnet by 

his Christian name when thinking of him. “How 
extraordinary that she hasn’t seen it for herself 
long ago! . . . And how upset she seemed 

over my request! I wonder why? . . . All 

the blood in her body seemed to make just one 
circuit. I thought she was going to be ill. Why 
was it? Can it be? ...” An answer to this 
question suddenly formed itself in her mind, she 
who for so long a time had been envious, with a 
clearness that made her whole body contract. 
She closed her eyes almost convulsively, saying 
aloud, “No, no.” Then to herself once more she 
took up the thread. “Ah, no, it is not possible. 
She would never betray him and she would never 
have thought of presenting this man to me with 
the declared intention of having him marry me if 
she had had a lively interest in him herself. 
These are chimeras; meah, hideous chimeras! 
Life is already sad enough and one has so few 


128 


Two Sisters 


friends! If one must cease to believe in one’s 
sister with whom one has always been perfectly 
open it would be too hard. . . . No. It is 

not so. . . . No, no!” 

She was surprised to find herself denying this 
suspicion aloud while arranging herself in her 
electric automobile wliich took her on her er- 
rands about Paris and wdiich she had left stand- 
ing at the Li^bauts’ door. She had given the 
driver the address of one of her friends whose 
day for receiving it w^as. Instead of getting out 
when the carriage arrived, however, she threw a 
new address to the man, that of a shop situated 
at the other end of Paris, w here she had not the 
least need of going. The prospect of getting 
mixed up in a conversation on indifferent sub- 
jects appeared to her as insupportable. Her 
coupd glided along swiftly without a jolt — in the 
falling twilight of this November afternoon. A 
yellowish fog was rising which the lights of the 
carriage lanterns pierced fantastically, and in 
spite of the “no,” pronounced with so much force 
a minute before Agathe de Mdris put again the 
question to herself, wdiich had risen up spon- 
taneously before her — the enigmatical “Can it 
be,” that involved so many painful hypotheses. 


Two Sisters 


129 


She dared look them in the face now — go to the 
very end of logic concerning them. 

“Can it be that Madeleine loves Louis Bris- 
sonnet? ... I remember when she wrote 
from Kagatz to tell of her meeting him how sur- 
prised I was at her enthusiasm. I explained it 
by her facility for infatuation w T hich she always 
had. I wished to see in it another proof that she 
really took to heart this project of a second mar- 
riage for me. I smiled at it and was very grate- 
ful to her. But what if I were deceived? No. 
I say again, no. She would not have introduced 
him to me. . . . But supposing she did this 

solely to be sure of opportunities to see him 
again? . . . And why not? She has always 

been so selfish, so little accustomed to deny her- 
self! Everything has always succeeded with 
her! ... It would be an infamous proceed- 
ing. . . . Nonsense! Does a woman who 

loves hesitate at such a proceeding? Madeleine 
has speculated on this coolness which she so often 
has reproached me for. My coolness! Just be- 
cause I do not show my feelings like her ! It may 
have been her excuse in her own eyes. She has 
said to herself, ‘My sister will never love this 
man, so I shall not do her any wrong ; as for me, 
she will serve me as a screen.’ ... I believe 


ISO 


Two Sisters 


that I am going mad. That would be to admit 
that she betrays her husband. . . . And that 

is not true ! It is not true !” 

As is seen, this little monologue implied a 
singular severity of judgment against the pure 
and tender Madeleine, unmerited as well as 
gratuitous. The primary cause of this injustice 
lay in the secret and constant ill-will nourished 
for such a long time by the elder of the two 
sisters against the younger. To suffer as Agathe 
had done for days and days from the content- 
ment of another was necessarily to cause to be 
formed inexact ideas on this other’s character. 
. . . She had too often and too severely criti- 

cised Madeleine’s mode of life not to have lost 
the exact meaning of this exquisite nature. 
Nothing is more frequent — let me say here — than 
these optical errors between persons who see 
each other constantly and know each other only 
through false images. This ignorance and lack 
of appreciation is the origin of almost all family 
tragedies as much as are money discussions. 
How many times we are astonished on discover- 
ing that fine qualities most evident in a son are 
ignored by his parents, that one brother does not 
notice in another brother a worth that strikes 
the eyes of the first newcomer ! For years Mme. 


Two Sisters 


131 


de Mdris had in several situations been ruled by 
this false illusion in regard to her sister, but 
never as she was at this moment. The automo- 
bile continued on its course, stopping here, stop- 
ping there, before one shop, before another. A 
prey to the fever of not being able to endure 
either solitude or company, Agathe multiplied 
her futile errands — in vain. . . . She could not 
escape from the jealousy which gnawed at her 
heart as soon as she was brought face to face 
with her thoughts. 

“It isn’t so ... ” She would answer to 
herself. Then : “But why couldn’t it be . . . 

Doesn’t one learn every day through some abso- 
lutely unexpected scandal of secrets which one 
would never have imagined as possible in certain 
lives? To deceive is to play the comedy; it is 
to feign a character that you are not. . . . 

And then Lidbaut is a good and excellent fellow, 
but how common he is ! How dull ! If any man 
fulfills the type of the betrayed husband it is 
certainly he! . . . ” The widow’s spite 

against the tranquil married life of her sister did 
not give her the habit of being very indulgent 
towards her brother-in-law, the physician. This 
spite found her again in the service of her unjust 
suspicions. “But in order that Madeleine betray 


182 


Two Sisters 


him it would be necessary to have Brissonnet as 
accomplice. ... In that case Louis’ atti- 
tude with me, his glances, his silence, which I 
thought concealed so many emotions would be so 
many lies ! I do not wish to believe this infamy 
in him. I cannot! ... On the contrary if 
he has found that Madeleine loves him while he 
does not love her, is not this idea a sufficient ex- 
planation as to why he dare not propose? Yes. 
At last I have the truth. . . . This is the 

reason why Madeleine has changed so much dur- 
ing these last weeks. She sees that Louis loves 
me and she herself is in love with him. It is the 
reason why he is silent. He is ignorant of my 
sentiments. She has let him see all of hers. . . . 
He has taken pity on her, and without a doubt 
he imagines that if he asked my hand in marri- 
age she would thwart it all. . . . And I who 

confided in her, I who have charged her with this 
message! . . . It is better so. I shall know 

just where I stand. Oh, if he loves me I shall 
not let my happiness be taken from me. And 
that he loves me I am assured ! . . . ” 

The young woman had repeated to herself 
these last few words with passion, perhaps in 
order to increase the evidence of it. Her tor- 
mented soul was fixed there as to a rock which 


Two Sister *. 


138 


could be found a force and support. For two 
hours she had been carrying on these contra- 
dictory meditations, in which she had by turns 
criminated and cleared her sister, until at last 
her automobile came to a halt at the entrance of 
the house in which she lived. It was a very large 
building, palatial, to use the barbarous vocab- 
ulary of to-day, on the corner of the avenue des 
Chump s-Ely sees and one of the cross streets. 
Mme. de Mdris occupied in this caravansary a 
vast apartment installed in an intensely modern 
fashion — rather in a spirit of opposition to the 
private house of Madeleine. She was astonished 
now to see standing before her door a coup6 with 
a yellow box drawn by two small horses, one 
white, the other black. The carriage she recog- 
nized as being the one her brother-in-law hired 
to make his visits. 

“Indeed,” she said to herself, “has Ltebaut a 
patient in my house? Unless he is calling on 
me. . . . But what would bring him, he Who 

comes to see me barely twice a year? ...” 
After her reflections of a few moments before an 
explanation of this unusual visit occurred to her 
which made her heart beat faster, while the 
elevator seemed to carry her at a snail’s pace up 


1S4 


Two Sisters 


to her third floor. “Can it be he suspects some- 
thing? But what? ...” 

The physician was in fact at his sister-in-law’s. 
He was waiting for her in a kind of boudoir, the 
appearance of which alone contrasted signifi- 
cantly with the individual corner where two 
hours before Madeleine was receiving Agathe. 
This little drawing-room belonging to the elder 
sister would have been enough to denounce that 
stiff, strained, and affected side of her nature, 
for she was in it a great portion of her time and 
yet it had the impersonality of a piece of deco- 
ration. Mme. de Mdris had endeavored to make 
it of a strictly classical style, a copy of a room 
of the eighteenth century, and had obtained an 
ensemble that was cold and artificial and, more- 
over, was not characteristic of herself. Her own 
grace, if a little affected, was strikingly out of 
place there, but not more out of place than was 
the face of Dr. Francois Li^baut, who in his pro- 
fessional costume of a black frock coat was now 
walking back and forth amidst the elegant fur- 
niture and clear marbles. As has already been 
said, he was a man of some forty and odd years, 
old before his time. ... He had suffered 
too much in those conditions of detestable 
hygiene where physicians necessarily live while 


Two Sisters 


135 


they perform all the many labors of their pro- 
fession and follow out their personal researches. 
His somewhat sallow complexion told of the per- 
nicious habit of eating his meals hurriedly and 
irregularly between two consultations, and his 
bowed head told of another habit no less per- 
nicious of spending long and late hours in his 
office when his day’s practice was oyer and that 
of the student commenced. Persons who are inter- 
ested in medical discussions are acquainted with 
his excellent treatise of “Cachexia,” which deals 
with the formidable diseases of the emulgent 
capillaries which gave a funereal kind of glory 
to the names of Addison, Basedow and Graves. 
The very special character of her husband’s 
studies explained clearly enough how he had 
failed to interest the intellect of the intelligent 
and devoted woman who was his wife. It was in 
vain for her to be the delicate and supple crea- 
ture that she was, and in consequence disposed 
and ready to modify her tastes with those of the 
distinguished man whom she had married. Her 
imagination had been incapable of following him 
in his analysis, so repugnant in certain points to 
a fresh and fine sensibility. She had looked on 
with an intense admiration while Francois 
worked with the untiring ardor of genius at his 


136 


Two Sisters 


scientific investigations. She had admired, too, 
his devotion to his patients and the noble quali- 
ties of his disinterestedness,, but all the technical 
domain where he lived in thought remained 
closed to her and had been for a long time hostile. 
What wonder ! Is it not this danger that menaces 
families of men who are too deeply engrossed in 
abstract research? If a man of such tastes has 
married a woman of simpler ones she resigns 
herself often to play near him the role of the 
Scriptural Martha, “who was cumbered about 
much serving.” But sometimes it happens that 
this Martha, once her task is done, feels a desire 
to become a Mary, she “who sat at the feet of her 
Master and heard His words,” and that she is 
unhappy not to be able to do this. More simply 
and without metaphor Madeleine Li^baut was 
one of those who, to be altogether happy in 
marriage, have the need of an absolute and close 
union in heart and in mind. For want of this 
union, irreconcilable with such researches of his 
profession, she had very soon felt a little solitary 
with her two children even, side by side with this 
companion who spent all his intelligence writing 
pages filled with those “abominable cases,” the 
delight of clinics. Several of these cases were a 
little too much for the maternal instinct in her. 


Two Sisters 


137 


and her sensibilities rebelled. It is remembered 
that her little daughter Charlotte had suffered 
from rheumatism followed bj a slight attack of 
chorea, which had been cured by the waters of 
Ragatz. Now one of the chapters of an extensive 
work by her husband bore this title, the very 
words of which pursued Madeleine with cruel 
menace, “Reports on Chorea and Basedow’s 
Disease.” She had searched through these pages 
in the physician’s library driven by that tortur- 
ing curiosity of conjecture which every one ex- 
periences who has seen a loved one suffer without 
well understanding the difficulty. The mother’s 
sentiments in respect to her husband’s scientific 
thought had been for a long time very complex. 
She recognized beforehand the ability with which 
the physician would care for their daughter if 
ever this mournful foreboding were realized, but 
she disliked this science and shuddered whenever 
such an apprehension possessed her. Exactly 
these were the impressions which had prepared 
her unconsciously to experience a home-sickness 
for another existence by the side of another man. 
Her will dormant had been awakened by an- 
other’s will whose temperament was like her 
own. This meeting at the Spa with the heroic 
African officer had suddenly given a form to her 


138 


Two Sisters 


dreams. She had sworn to herself that no one 
in the world would divine the awakening in her 
of an excitement at which her principles were 
horrified. Alas, she had been discovered by the 
one from whom she would have the most passion- 
ately desired to conceal the changes in the 
secret recesses of her heart, Francois Lidbaut 
himself, and the unhappy husband was going to 
initiate to his discovery the sister Agathe whose 
jealous perspicacity had already frightened her 
so much. 

When Agathe entered the drawing-room her 
first glance informed her of what she had just had 
a presentiment of: that her brother-in-law’s call 
announced an extraordinary event. But what? 
The physician’s face, habitually grave but of a 
seriousness that was both distracting and vague 
like that of most men who are following out long 
lines of thought, was strained and contracted 
from anxieties. At the same time the emotion 
of the interview which he was preparing himself 
to open up with his wife’s sister gave to him an 
uneasiness, the feverishness of which was mani- 
fest in all his movements. His fingers moved 
convulsively over the backs of the chairs and 
around the trinkets which he took up and set 
back without perceiving. His eyes were unsteady 


Two Sisters 


139 


and he seemed to dare not let them repose on his 
interlocutor. With her scarcely was the conver- 
sation opened when an ardent searching look 
seemed to take root in her eyes as if they did not 
wish to let a word nor the least movement escape 
them in their eagerness to know. ... To 
know — but what? . . . Possessed herself by 
the thoughts with which the afternoon’s conver- 
sation had burdened her, why might not Agathe 
already have suspected the truth? Her brother- 
in-law had come to her house with the purpose 
of talking of the relations of Madeleine and Bris- 
sonnet. For him, too, then these relations were 
not clear? . . . The curiosity to find out if 

she had guessed right was so strong that she felt 
herself trembling, and in the incapacity of con- 
cealing her nervousness she feigned an uneasi- 
ness very different from that which really seized 
her. 

“How troubled you seem, Frangois! ... 99 
she said, going straight up to him and taking his 
hand. “What is it? ... . What is it? . . . 
My sister is not feeling ill? ... I left her 
rather fatigued. ... It isn’t that? No. . . . 
Nothing has happened to Georges or Charlotte, 
I hope? . . But tell me ... 99 

“Calm yourself, my dear Agathe,” said Lidbaut. 


140 


Two Sisters 


Deeply moved as he was himself, he instinctively 
adopted the professional tone that he would have 
used at the bed of any patient who was a prey to 
nervous over-excitement. “No,” he continued, 
“nothing has happened to any one fortunately. 

. . . However, you are right — it is of her 

that I have come to talk to you.” 

As the reader already is aware, Mme. de M6ris 
had never approved of her sister’s marriage, and 
the apparent happiness of this bourgeois union 
had not contributed to diminish her antipathy. 
Accordingly she had never been pleased to study 
this brother-in-law for whom she blushed a little 
in spite of his high worth. There again the great 
law of family misunderstanding through a pre- 
conceived idea had accomplished its work. 
Agathe had judged Li^baut once for all and con- 
demned him. She had formed in her imagination 
the figure of a very honest person, very tedious, 
but superior, without a doubt, in his profession, 
absorbed in his work which did not interest her 
in the slightest degree, and absolutely devoid of 
the art of conversation. That he could please her 
young sister, she had declared to be totally be- 
yond her comprehension from the first day, and 
her ill nature toward this sister — of whom she 
was secretly jealous — had found a unique oc- 


Two Sisters 


141 


casion to exercise itself cloaked as a generous 
pity. She did not suspect that this silent re- 
served man, retired by his own will from society, 
had an almost morbid delicacy for impressions. 

Frangois Li^baut was one of those sensitive 
persons who perceive the least difference in 
manner or thought, whom a sudden air of cool- 
ness in a relative paralyzes, who suffers from the 
least sign of indifference. This fine susceptibility 
of heart hardly seems compatible with the 
strenuous discipline of the hospital, but it exists, 
however, with some physicians, and when there 
happens to be a radical antithesis between the re- 
quirements of his position and native disposition, 
the former exasperates the latter instead of help- 
ing it. Madeleine’s husband belonged to this 
very rare and easily misunderstood class of prac- 
titioners who become friends to their patients, 
whom a mother’s tears shed at the bed of a dying 
child completely undoes, who suffer from the in- 
gratitude of a patient as if by treachery. One 
may imagine, after what has been said, just what 
this latent antipathy of his wife’s sister had 
meant to him extending as it did from the time 
of his engagement. At first he had tried awk- 
wardly to disarm Agathe; not succeeding, he had 
ended by accepting this hostility, and by falling 


142 


Two Sisters 


back on himself and enveloping himself in in- 
difference. For him to have come this evening 
to take his sister-in-law into his confidence it was 
necessary for him to be subjected to a very pain- 
ful trial. Mme. de Mdris had recognized this 
immediately, but what his first words revealed to 
her which she never could even have imagined 
as coming from him was the sagacity exercised 
by this reserved man during so many years. It 
was above all the penetration and the pride of 
this soul whom she had considered worthy of so 
little interest, as “so vulgar,” to use her own 
words. It was, in short, the hidden drama, the 
true undercurrent of a family the tranquility 
of which she had unconsciously envied while 
affecting to disdain the homely character in it. 
Agathe had dreamed for herself romantic ad- 
ventures. The issue of this little sentimental 
drama in which she and her sister were involved 
with all its secret rivalry of love was to give her 
convincing proof that the much-longed-for ro- 
mantic in life is found neither in exceptional 
events nor in extraordinary destinies. Serious 
and profound beings, those who have “accepted” 
their life, as she had worded it on the platform 
of the station at Ragatz, who are bound to it by 
the most mysterious ties, are those who experi- 


Two Sisters 


148 


ence in the highest degree intense and sublime 
emotions vainly sought by so many imaginations 
disordered by revolt and complications. 

“Agathe,” began Li^baut after a silence, “the 
things that I came here to say to you are so 
grave, so private, that at the moment of speaking 
words fail me. ... We have never talked 
very openly to each other, you and I. . . . 

Do not think for an instant that there is the 
least reproach in my words ...” He 
stopped his sister-in-law with a gesture as she 
was about to protest. “The fault is altogether 
my own, who have not made it evident enough 
how far I am disposed to love you as a brother. 

. . . But, yes, I have always been this way, 

even with Madeleine. Have I not? I do not 
know how to express myself. It is ridiculous, I 
realize it too well. A timid physician ! A senti- 
mental physician who keeps to himself impres- 
sions which he dare not express! . . . It is 

a fact nevertheless, and on the matter of having 
an interview with you on which depends per- 
haps my entire happiness, it is necessary that I 
should have said to you in the beginning just 
this in order that you may not think me mad, 
so much does the man whom I am going to show 


144 


Two Siater8 


up to you differ from the one you know, or be- 
lieve you know ! . . . ” 

“He whom I know,” responded Mme. de 
Mdris,” has always been the best of husbands 
and the most amiable of brothers-in-law ...” 

“Let us dispense with fine words ...” 
Lidbaut interrupted almost irritably: “I beg 
your pardon, but at certain solemn moments, and 
this is one of them, words of courtesy are painful. 
Nothing is endurable but the truth. . . . 

Besides,” and his face expressed a sudden reso- 
lution which was almost brutal, that of a person 
who wishing to make an end at any price, re- 
nounces at once all preambles which he has pre- 
pared and goes straight to his point, “Besides, 
of what use is it to return to the awkwardness 
which I have allowed to come into my relations 
with you? I am the husband of your sister. We 
are connected, she and I, by the strongest ties 
that exist outside of those of blood. We are mem- 
bers, you, my wife and I, of the same family. 1 
have the right to put to you the question which is 
burning out my heart and which is the reason T 
am here. . . . Agathe, for more than three 

months now a man has entered into our intimate 
life whom none of us knew before except by 
name. . . . Each week since then has only 


Two Sisters 


145 


made him the more intimate. . . . This man 

has not only been received at your home and at 
ours, but he has been presented to all our friends. 
When they invite us, you, Madeleine and me, 
they invite him. If we go to the theatre, he goes. 
. . . To any exhibition, he is there, too. . . . 
This man is young and he is not married. . . . 
Agathe, I ask you to answer me honestly: Are 
you the cause of M. Brissonnet’s coming into our 
midst as he does? Is it because of you,” he re- 
peated. And indistinctly he continued as if he 
were ashamed to own to the suffering which at- 
tended this simple and agonizing question, “or 
because of Madeleine? ...” 

An involuntary start shook the elder sister. 
In order that her discreet and silent brother-in- 
law should come to the point of putting this 
question directly to her, almost brutally, it was 
necessary that he should have observed positive 
evidence, and what evidence? — that he should 
have been put on some clue, a,nd what clue? A 
response which was no less direct and brutal 
came to the lips of this passionate and jealous 
rival to say : “Tell me all, Francois. Do you be- 
lieve that there can be a secret between Mad- 
eleine and Brissonnet? You believe it? From 
what? How? ...” But she had the energy 


146 


Two Sisters 


to control herself, partly through an instinct of 
free-masonry of the sex which causes a woman 
before a man’s searching inquiry to feel herself, 
first of all, bound with the other woman. Be- 
tween sisters, even though they be not very in- 
timate, this impulse is still stronger, more spon- 
taneous, more irresistible. And then to show at 
once how the question put by her brother-in-law 
upset her was for Agathe to admit her own sen- 
timents. It was to declare that she loved and 
whom she loved. It was to fail in that command 
over herself which for so long a time had grown 
to be stiffness in her relations with the younger 
sister’s husband. Finally it was not learning 
what she desired to know, no matter at what 
price. Another instinct, that of stratagem and 
diplomacy, always awakened in women who are 
the most violently transported by passion, made 
her find on the moment a certain means of draw- 
ing out the secret from this man who was as 
impatient as herself to know the truth of the 
situation. He must tell her all his reasons for 
being jealous. 

“It is my turn to ask you to be calm, my dear 
Frangois,” she responded. “You see me stupe- 
fied by what I am hearing. ... In the first 
place, because you think that you have some- 


Two Sisters 


147 


thing to reproach yourself for in your attitude 
to me. ... I repeat it that I have ever 
found you very kind and affectionate, and these 
are not mere words for courtesy’s sake. But we 
shall come back to that another time. . . . T 

come now to the second point and the most im- 
portant since it seems to upset you. I mean to 
Monsieur Brissonnet’s attentions to Madeleine 
and myself. I shall speak to you perfectly 
frankly. For whom are his visits intended — for t 
her, or for me? Neither for the one nor the other 
that I am aware of, at least up to the present. 
Not for me, since he has not asked my hand in 
marriage and I am a widow. Not for Madeleine, 
since she is not free. You are not going to do 
my sister the effrontery of thinking that she per- 
mits herself to be made love to, are you? ... I 
warn you that if you have such an idea I shall 
not pardon you. . . . Monsieur Brissonnet 

visits us because he is alone in Paris, and off 
duty, and because we receive him as he deserves 
to be received after his brave actions and his 
misfortunes. All this is very simple and nat- 
ural. . . . Once more be cool, Francois. 

Tell me — am I not right?” 

She was looking at him while speaking with 
a half smile which trembled at the corners of her 


148 


Two Sisters 


delicate lips. There was a something in her 
voice that was forced, in which her interlocutor 
was not deceived. * The medical profession is like 
that of portrait-painting. The physician goes 
constantly among those who give him practice in 
instantaneous intuitions which partake of the 
miraculous. The least change in a countenance 
is caught by them. When the power of observa- 
tion is at the service of simple curiosity a man 
may not be able to interpret these signs which 
he knows he sees so clearly. Thrown into play 
by passion this professional spirit ends in lucidi- 
ties literally astounding to those who are its 
objects, and Agathe listened with a stupor that 
confused her to the words that Lidbaut spoke : 

“You lie, Agathe, and you lie badly. If it 
were true that Monsieur Brissonnet came into our 
midst neither on your account nor Madeleine’s 
you would not be so moved as you are in reply- 
ing to me. . . . Look here!” he insisted, and 

seizing her hand he felt her pulse before she had 
been able to draw herself away from this act of 
inquisition. . . . “Why does your heart beat 
so fast just now? . . . Why have you there 

in your throat a pressure which forces you to 
breathe more deeply? . . . Why is it? . . . 
I know and I am going to tell you. You love 


Two Sisters 


149 


Monsieur Brissonnet. You love him. ... If 
I had had any doubt of it, I should doubt no 
longer, for just to see you now ...” 

“From the instant that you confess to these 
ideas,” interrupted Agathe, disengaging herself, 
“permit me to say to you, Francois, that I do 
not understand in the least the step you are tak- 
ing. I wish to inform you besides that there are 
points on which a man of politeness should touch 
very delicately the feelings of a woman even if 
she is a sister-in-law, and you have just been 
wanting in this simple delicacy. Whether I love 
M. Brissonnet or not is my affair. What con- 
nection is there between this sentiment which 
concerns me alone, if it does exist at all, and the 
question which you have put to me?” 

“What connection?” repeated the physician. 
“When one loves doesn’t one know if one is loved 
in return?” And in a tone which Mme. de M6ris 
did not recognize in him, “Do not use stratagem 
with me, Agathe. I put you again the question, 
very simply. Does Captain Brissonnet love you ? 
Yes or no? Answer me. I am your brother. 
You can trust me with your plans for the future. 
You are free, as you yourself said. The Captain 
is also. It is very natural that you should think 
of beginning life anew and with him. Has he 


150 


Two Sisters 


talked to you with this in mind? Or if he has 
not spoken of it, have you guessed from his atti- 
tude that he would speak to you about it if his 
shyness did not hinder him? that perhaps now 
he does not dare but that he will venture some 
time? It was just this that I meant to say when 
I asked you if M. Brissonnet visited us on your 
account or ... ” He stopped a moment as if the 
end of the sentence which had imprudently es- 
caped him a short time before was too difficult 
to utter again. It was Agathe who pronounced 
the cruel words this time which, the moment 
before, had so unstrung her. 

“Or on account of Madeleine? ...” she fin- 
ished. And carried along in her turn by the 
emotion which these strangely exa,ct words of 
Lffibaut had aroused in her, the jealous woman 
said: “You are right. It would be better for 
everybody if all the uncertainties were dissi- 
pated. And they shall be. . . . Well, yes, Fran- 
cois, I love M. Brissonnet. In fact I haven’t the 
least motive for concealing a sentiment which I 
have a right to have and which takes nothing 
from anybody else. As to his sentiments for me, 
I am not able to say as much because he has not 
told them to me and because I do not know them. 
You pretend that one can always tell if one 


Two Sisters 


151 


is loved when one loves herself. ... It is not true, 
and this uncertainty is a martyrdom which at 
moments is very painful. It is mine. . . . This 
avowal is too humiliating not to prove to you 
that I have responded with perfect openness. It 
is for you to be no less open to me in return. 
You owe it to me to let me understand your 
thoughts — do you hear me? — every one of them. 
You have got the secret of my feelings for Mon- 
sieur Brissonnet. Certain things have made you 
believe that he responds to them. Others have 
made you believe something else since the name 
of Madeleine came to your lips after my own. 
What are these things and what is this “some- 
thing else? Finish. ...” 

“Ah,” answered Lidbaut hopelessly, “it is my 
turn to no longer understand, to no longer know. 
I was so sure that you would give me some proof, 
some explanation — and it is quite the opposite. 
Everything now seems vague and uncertain. I 
have tried to give shape to my ideas and I feel 
them only vanishing, disappearing, and instead 
the ideas I see formed are according to facts and 
so different. They are not the fancies of a sick 
brain. ... I have not been dreaming while 
observing during these three months how you, 
Agathe, have changed. % Neither have I been 


152 


Two Sisters 


dreaming in finding out that Madeleine has also 
changed. . . . When she returned from the 
Springs she was still merry and open-hearted, 
but a little less so than before she went. I took 
her unawares, sometimes, dreaming vaguely. 
I noticed that her conversations with Charlotte 
were always allusions to the incidents of their 
stay at Ragatz. She had nothing to reproach 
herself for since she had written me every detail 
of her meeting with Captain Brissonnet. She 
has nothing to reproach herself for even to-day, 
I am sure, sure as that you and I are standing 
here. She told me in her letters how she had in- 
vited this man to please you. ... As soon 
as he returned he came to the house. I was not 
mistaken then. In the first glance which he and 
I exchanged I felt that antipathy which is a 
warning. Yes, I believe it. Animals feel it 
keenly before beings who can do them injury. At 
this first call Madeleine was very nervous. I 
could see it very plainly. I attributed this nerv- 
ousness to this design of a marriage between you 
and the Captain. I had heard her so often ex- 
press anxieties about your future! I knew how 
sensitive she was about the least incidents which 
concerned you! . . . And then M. Brissonnet 
was introduced to you. He called at your home. 


Two Sisters 


158 


He called on us. This nervousness of Madeleine 
did not become any better. Then I explained 
this singular condition by physical disorders. I 
began to study her. I saw her growing paler 
each day, that she was no longer eating nor sleep- 
ing, that she was becoming aenemic, that she 
would sink into those silent periods of absorp- 
tion from which one emerges with a start. This 
evidence showed me that it had to do solely with 
a moral cause. What was the cause? But one 
thing had happened out of the ordinary since 
her return to Paris, and that was the presence in 
her circle of Monsieur Brissonnet. I had no 
difficulty in determining that Madeleine’s me- 
lancholy underwent rises and falls according to 
the going and coming of this new friend. If he 
was to dine with us or to spend the evening an 
excitement dominated her. If she was certain 
that he would not come it was depression. . . . 
At first I struggled against this evidence. I 
wanted to persuade myself that I was mistaken. 
My efforts toward overcoming my suspicions made 
them only increase. I attempted to talk of you 
to find out if she cherished still the hope that 
you would decide to marry Monsieur Brissonnet, 
I asked her if she thought that he pleased you 
and you him. . . . From her embarrassment 


154 


Two Sisters 


which she did not control — to her very evident 
annoyance — I measured the way which she had 
come over and the direction. ... You ask me 
what are my signs? It is this embarrassment 
which she shows when Brissonnet passes the 
evening wherever you may be and she knows of 
it, and the effort she makes to change the subject 
whenever the conversation by chance falls upon 
herself. It is the w T ay she has of lowering her 
eyes and warding off my fixed glance which she 
fears. It is the exalted tenderness with which 
she embraces her children as if she begged of 
them the force to keep herself from the agitation 
with which she is consumed. . . . These things 
all prove — you know as well as I — that Made- 
leine is an honest woman and is fighting against 
a passion. But to fight against a passion is to 
have it. She loves this man, Agathe, do you hear 
me? She loves him. I accuse her no more of 
betraying me than I have accused you a few 
minutes ago of being a coquette. I know that 
you have not permitted yourself anything blame- 
worthy with your sentiments. I know in the 
same way that Madeleine has not betrayed me 
and that she will never betray me. But I cannot 
bear the idea that another has taken the place in 
her thought and heart. I can not . . . ” 


Two Sisters 


155 


While Liebaut laid bare in this paroxysm of 
agony his most secret family troubles, the sorrow 
expressed in his voice and eyes was of so rare 
and pure a quality, the nobility of his character 
appeared so plainly in the total absence of low 
suspicions, that Mme. de M6ris could not help 
from being touched. This pity dictated to her 
her duty: that of insisting more strongly than 
before on disproofs; but this confirmation of 
ideas with those she had nourished all the after- 
noon had stirred that bad cord of feminine jeal- 
ousy which gives out so easily a sound of hate 
even in the loftiest soul and Agathe did not have 
a lofty soul. Contradictory feelings — the com- 
passion for the real suffering of her brother-in- 
law — and a muttering anger against a preferred 
rival, inspired the words in response to Li^baut’s 
confidence. 

“But are you sure you do not exaggerate, my 
poor Frangois? Between a rather lively interest 
in a person and a passion there is an abyss of 
difference. . . . Why did you not say to 

Madeleine just what you have said to me and in 
the same way? You are quite right. She is true to 
the core. She will always be that. . . . She 

would have been the first to reassure you, \ am 
certain ...” 


156 


Two Sisters 


“Speak to her? How can I?” interrupted her 
brother-in-law. “There seemed no other than you 
to whom to come for assistance. I knew that you 
too had become fascinated with this man. She 
wished, I know, to marry you to Brissonnet and 
then this passion overcame her which she is re- 
proaching herself for with so much remorse. She 
does not pardon herself for this situation either 
on my account or on your account. ... I 
said to myself that as it stands it is necessary 
for Agathe to know it and for me, too, to know 
all there is to be known. Even now it is plain 
that it is one of two things : either Monsieur Bris- 
sonnet loves you, in which case I hoped you 
would marry at once and travel abroad so that 
Mjadeleine might be spared ... or else this 

man does not love you and then ” Here the 

jealous man’s husband’s voice became singularly 
indistinct and heavy. . . . “It is true that 

he loves my wife . . .” He insisted on going 

on incited by some involuntary movement of his 
interlocutor, “Yes, he loves one of you two. His 
conduct has no other explanation unless it is to 
admit — what I refuse to believe — that he is a 
miserable betrayer of women. In this case it is 
for me to act . . .” 

“What do you mean?” asked Mme. de M6ris, 


Two Sisters 


157 


becoming suddenly all of a tremble. She had 
just seen in her mind’s eyes her brother-in-law 
and the man whom she loved face to face, a pro- 
vocation, then a duel. “What are you going to 
do?” 

“The simplest possible step,” responded Li6- 
baut, becoming suddenly very calm. He on the 
other hand saw himself in imagination speaking 
man to man, and this vision gave him the cool- 
ness for manly explanations. “The simplest,” 
he repeated, “and the most legitimate and ne- 
cessary. I shall proceed in the most courteous 
way in the beginning and without threats. I 
shall say to him that his attentions at your house 
and at ours have provoked comments. I shall 
appeal to his honour. I hope also that this first 
interview will be sufficient . . .” 

“But you cannot have this conversation with 
him,” interrupted Agathe, more earnestly still. 
“Both Madeleine and I will forbid it,” she added. 
“I beg of you, Francois, not to see M. Brisson- 
net. What do you wish anyway? That this situ- 
ation should come to an end? It is going to end 
I say. I know nothing of what you have just 
informed me. But I, too, suffer from this un- 
certainty. I could no more speak to M. Brisson 
net than you could speak to him — much less 


158 


Two Sisters 


even. I have asked of Madeleine this very day 
to tell him precisely what you want him told: 
that his marked attentions have been noticed. 
I had of course no idea of what you have been 
speaking. . . . If I had had, it is not to my 

sister that I should have spoken. But it is done, 
and the conclusion wdiich must follow this inter- 
view is the one which you desire. ... If 
Monsieur Brissonnet loves me, he will tell it to 
Madeleine that he wishes to marry me. If he 
does not love me he could no longer after this 
explanation come to see me. Not being permit- 
ted to come longer to see me he could no longer 
call at your house. He would disappear from 
our midst ...” 

“And did Madeleine consent to see him and 
put to him this kind of ultimatum?” asked Lid- 
baut. 

“She consented ...” Agathe replied. 

A silence fell on them both. They lowered 
their eyes at the same time. Both lifted them 
again at the same instant and looked at each 
other. The same unbearable vision had passed 
before their jealous minds. Both understood 
now, although they vrould not admit it that 
Madeleine loved Commander Brissonnet and 
that she was loved by him. They ought to have 


Two Sisters 


159 


understood also that Madeleine had never let 
the officer suspect the troubles of her heart. 
They did know it. Nevertheless the one and the 
other, the husband, and the sister, had at the 
same time the same distrustful thought. It was 
Agathe who dared to express it. She said almost 
in an undertone: 

“Ah! how I should like to hear their conver- 
sation! . . . Then I should know . . . ” 

She seized her brother-in-law’s hands and al- 
ready tried to bring him into the complicity. 
“We should then know. ... Do you hear, 
Francois?” Then she went on almost inaudibly : 
To-morrow he is to see her about two o’clock. 
So she told me. She believes you will be out. 
... If you should return in the meantime? . . . 
Your study communicates with the little draw- 
-ing-room and there are draperies before the 
door. ... If we should hide there there would no 
longer be this uncertainty, and we should know 
. . . ” She scarcely realized what she was saying. 


CHAPTER SEVEN. 


TWO NOBLE HEARTS. 

No proposals could have been more contrary 
to the loyal and straight-forward nature of 
Francois Li^baut than this one. To spy in con- 
cealment, which his sister-in-law had invited him 
to do, under his own roof, at his own fireside, 
what more dishonorable act for him with the 
prerogative of husband to the woman of his 
heart! But he was undergoing one of those 
crises of passion in which the savageness of 
wounded love shows itself. It is in such mo- 
ments that a man of honor lets himself be led 
to open letters, that he forces open a locked desk, 
that he pays for indiscretions of a watchful 
servant. When the unhappy man left Mme. de 
M6ris he had consented not to all she had plan- 
ned, but to the part which pertained to himself. 
It was agreed between them when he had once 
been informed of the exact time of the engage- 
ment he would return without giving warning 
160 


Two Sisters 


161 


and would himself alone try to hear the con- 
versation of Madeleine and Brissonnet. But he 
did not wish his sister-in-law to be present. 
Even at moments of so furious a jealousy it 
would have been to repugnant for him to betray 
Madeleine in any degree to her sister. He could 
fancy her talking freely, believing herself safe 
in her own home, while behind the door the 
elder sister with envy in her heart was crouch- 
ing like a spy. No, he would not betray his wife 
by this sort of betrayal. He could not league 
himself against her thus with a secret enemy. 
That he alone should make use of some clan- 
destine proceeding he believed to be his exclu- 
sive right. . . . But he owed it to himself 

not to go beyond the bounds of this right by 
mixing up in a complicity which would have 
degraded himself too much in his own eyes. . . . 
Yet did he have the right even to do this? After 
responding in a certain sense to the proposal of 
his sister-in-law Lidbaut was seized with doubt 
and remorse. He had not been ten minutes 
away from her when his loyal nature revolted 
against a plan which he would not have dared 
to conceive without her. It seemed to him that 
he had just had a bad dream, that this inter- 
view with Agathe had never taken place, and 


162 


Two Sisters 


according as he drew near the rue Spontini and 
his own house, this impression changed into an- 
other. He was going to come face to face with 
Madeleine. It would be necessary to dissimu- 
late before her not only his feelings, which he 
had been doing for so many weeks with such 
effort, but this unadmissable plan which was in- 
sulting to her and debasing to him. This very 
evening he must, to further his plan, commence 
an inquest unworthy of one who had shared their 
peaceful family life. Would he speak of Brisson- 
net without appearing to suspect all this which 
he had learned through Agathe? Would he at- 
tempt to have Madeleine tell that she was ex- 
pecting the officer and at what time? ... Or 
better, would he be quite silent on this point so 
as to better surprise them the next day? . . . 

Would he conceal the fact that he had seen 
Madame de M6ris, or, on the contrary, would 
he tell her so as to provoke a confidence on the 
mission which the elder sister had charged the 
younger with? . . . These fluctuating ideas 

gave him an agitation that was almost insuffer- 
able, against which he however forced himself 
to struggle as he left his vehicle on the Avenue 
Malakoff and returned home on foot. When he 
opened the hall with the little key he carried on 


Two Sisters 


168 


his watch-chain he had gained at least control 
over his nerves. 

This opportunity of returning home without 
anyone being made aware of his presence is 
quite consistent with professional habits. Agathe 
had realized this particular fact when she had 
traced out the plan of his secret return the next 
day. Now it was a little like a rehearsal of the 
scene which was to take place. It succeeded so 
well in being just this in his imagination that 
Li^baut felt himself blush at Madeleine’s words 
as she received , him : 

“Ah, it is you, Frangois! You frightened me. 
. . . I did not hear the carriage.” 

She had in fact awakened with a start from a 
reverie into which she had fallen after her 
sister’s conversation and the departure of Mme. 
Ethorel. She had then closed the door and sunk 
into the attitude of elbow r s on her knees, her 
head bent forward, where she had remained 
looking into the fire as it slowly consumed the 
logs. She was struggling, lost in the midst of 
numberless contrary thoughts and emotions. 
This meditation had evidently been painful, for 
the face that she turned towards Lidbaut bore 
the traces of a strange lassitude. This creature, 
so full of charm and resource, nevertheless felt 


164 


Two Sisters 


nothing so strongly as an anxiety for his wel- 
fare when he said to her : “I returned afoot. I 
wanted a little walk.” 

“Aren’t you feeling well?” she asked. “It is 
true. Your face is flushed. . . . You have 

a rush of blood to the head. . . . You are 

working too hard ...” she added. “And 
why? We are rich enough and you are known 
everywhere. You ought to take a rest.” 

She had taken her husband’s hand while 
speaking in this affectionate and solicitous way 
these words which were as sincere as she her- 
self was sincere. “So she loves me ... ” 

thought the physician. How many just such 
proofs of devotion Madeleine had given him since 
her return from Ragatz. And each one had only 
given the husband that dull sense of what it 
might mean and an uneasiness each time which 
prompted the question : “Yes, she loves me, but 
how much? ...” And he had had an in- 
tuition of what was, alas! the truth behind this 
touching attitude: the fixed resolution of a wife 
who knows herself to be irreproachable and who 
is so much the more affectionate to her husband 
since she does not pardon herself for feeling 
that her heart is controlled by another. Such 
tenderness may indeed be very sincere. This 


Two Sisters 


165 


woman may have for this husband a real friend- 
ship, so many memories in common, a respect, a 
sympathy, children which bind one to another. 
These were the ties — dear and insoluble ties, but 
they do not make up for love, and for a man as 
proud and as passionately in love as was Fran- 
$ois Li^baut what bitterness to discover a 
duality of interior life such as this in the person 
who bore his name! In what word, however, 
could he express a complaint which was not 
blamable? And on the other hand before such 
gestures and w r ords of solicitude which Made- 
leine had just spoken, how could he refrain from 
wondering that he was not deceived? There was 
also in this woman’s earnestness a perspicacity 
which made her more formidable to him. It is 
true that he felt often very weary. This proof 
of a constant interest in his welfare made him 
again feel remorse for the interview that he had 
just had and for the plan born of it. He re- 
plied : 

“When I finish up writing my paper I shall 
take a rest ...” 

“I know you,” she repeated, shaking her head, 
“and I know the nature of your researches. . . . 
I have heard you and your friends say so often 
that in medicine everything is connected with 


166 


Two Sisters 


everything else. Each paper leads to another, 
and so on indefinitely. ... Do you know 
what would be a sensible thing to do? Winter 
is coming. Charlotte and Georges are not very 
sturdy. In spite of Ragatz I fear for Char* 
lotte and I too am tired out. The cold is so 
trying to me. We might all go to the south and 
spend several months at Hy&res, Cannes, at 
Nice or in Italy?” 

Her eyes were supplicating, or was not this 
whole proposal a form of prayer to relieve the 
anguish? She wanted to go away then! Why? 
Was it not a flight from this man whom she was 
forbidding herself to love, but whom she did 
love? This new evidence of his wife’s troubled 
conscience threw the jealous husband into a 
frenzy of anxiety the same that had driven him 
to Agathe in pursuit of the truth. He replied, 
apparently humoring Madeleine’s fancy. 

“Perhaps you are right. Such a journey 
tempts me a great deal theoretically, and if this 
isn’t simply an idle notion with you ...” 

“Well?” she asked, since he was silent. 

“Well, I do not say no to it. . . . Then 

you are so eager to leave Paris?” he dared to 
add. “You will regret nothing, or no one, not 
even your sister?” 


Two Sisters 


167 


“Oh, my sister!” she began, as if she had 
something confidential to say to him. Then 
breaking off, she continued : “The children are 
coming down and we shall not longer be alone. 
I was just started to talk seriously about 
Agathe, but what I have to say will keep till 
we have time ...” 

The little son and daughter were in the habit 
of dining with their parents when the latter 
were at home. Notwithstanding their prosper- 
ous circumstances in life, the Lidbauts retained 
the old custom of the French bourgeoisie , which 
has a tendency to disappear from the more 
elegant circles to give place to the English cus- 
tom of banishing the children to the nursery. 
Perhaps this new system, by separating more 
completely the young folk from their elders, has 
its real advantages of education. To counter- 
balance this it lacks the cordiality of the fire- 
side which was for so long the charm of our 
family life. Above all, it suppresses the great- 
est boon of the fruitful marriage. For there are 
certain hours when the presence of a son or a 
daughter exercises over the parents an influence 
of calmness and satisfaction the power of which 
is equaled by nothing else in human experience. 
If Georges or Charlotte had not entered when 


168 


Two Sisters 


the mother had just said these words so puzzling 
to him : “I have something to say to you about 
Agathe,” the father would certainly have had 
no patience to wait longer but would have 
pressed Madeleine with questions which might 
have offended her. He might have become ex- 
asperated himself and the wife’s heart might per- 
haps have closed to him. Instead of this, when 
the two blond heads made their appearance and 
the pretty prattle of these little creatures had 
commenced to fill the room, the nervous tension 
of the jealous husband was relaxed. The act 
which the impassioned words of his sister-in-law 
and his own suffering had made him decide to 
do, that outrageous act of disloyalty which 
characterizes a common spy, struck him sud- 
denly as being impossible. To see those two 
pairs of childish eyes fixed with love on Made- 
leine and the mother’s hand caressing the blond 
curls, and then at table to watch the three faces 
seated there in the encircling rays which the 
suspended lamp threw upon them made Fran- 
gois Li&baut feel that he had not the right to 
introduce into his family detective proceedings. 
This woman who w 7 as his wife deserved to be 
respected even in the very depths of her in- 
timate life, for she carried there perhaps a 


Two Sisters 


169 


secret sorrow and a struggle. What right had 
he to leave her all alone to this hidden tumult of 
contradictory feelings when it w T as because of 
him that it had become an expiatory trial. A 
sudden awakening was taking place in his gen- 
erous mind. “For their sakes,” he said to him- 
self after dinner as he drew his children to him 
and pressed them to his breast, “Yes, for them I 
ought not to let the shame of such a meanness 
creep in among us. Madeleine will never know 
that I have suffered from this mortal jealousy. 
If I am deceived in believing that she has been 
troubled by the attentions of another it is only 
just that I be silent. It is but right also, if I 
am not deceived. She deserves silence since she 
is having the strength to conquer herself. No, 
never has a wrong thought come to her, never. 
To-morrow in this conversation which she prom- 
ised her sister that she will have with this man, 
she will not say a word that she should not say 
or listen to a word that she should not hear. No, 
I shall not spy upon her like a thief. It would 
be infamy on my part, and I shall not do it. 
But what has she to tell me about Agathe? 
If she tells me of her visit here to-day and of 
the step she is about to take, shall I lie to her? 
Shall I conceal from her my call on her sister? 


170 


Two Sisters 


How shall I explain to her then the reason 
why I did not mention it as soon as I came in? 
Ah, why did I not follow my instinct? Why 
was I not open and out with her from the first 
moment?” 

These reflections came to him while he was 
playing with his two children, and their incohe- 
rence was indicative of the contradictory senti- 
ments with which he was possessed. It proved 
both the irresistible need of an explanation 
with Madeleine and also of the necessity of 
keeping silence. And how would he be able to 
keep to himself the secret of this insulting plan 
before her loyalty which, once the children were 
gone, she very plainly proved? 

“ I told you I had something to say to you 
about my sister,” she began. “It has to do with 
a delicate subject, so delicate that I have hes- 
itated a long time before speaking of it to you. 
But things have come to such a decided crisis 
that it is my duty to bring you into them. You 
remember what I wrote you from Ragatz,” she 
continued, making a visible effort, “and the 
scheme I had formed in respect to Agathe? I 
was dreaming of marrying her to Monsieur Bris- 
sonnet. . . . This project of a match made 

you laugh, but when the officer presented himself 


Two Sisters 


171 


here at our house in Paris we accepted him with 
one accord into our social circle. He seems to 
show a desire to become more intimate with 
Agathe. We are not opposed to this, for the fact 
is that he has become one of our best friends. 

And what we dared hardly hope for has 
happened. Agathe’s heart is won. . . . She 

loves him.” 

“You acquaint me with nothing new,” re- 
sponded Li^baut. It was on the tip of his tongue 
to make confession of the conversation with his 
sister-in-law. He kept silence, however, his 
heart-strings tightened, letting his wife speak 
instead. What was she going to say to him, 
being possessed of no knowledge that he had 
not? He would have there a very tempting occa- 
sion to prove her truthfulness without dishonor- 
ing himself by employing a shameful stratagem. 

“If you have guessed the interest which Mon- 
sieur Brissonnet has in Agathe,” Madeleine went 
on, “you will realize that you may not be the 
only one. She has not succeeded in hiding this 
sentiment from other persons around us, and 
who are not so friendly as you or I. . . . In 

short they are gossiping about it and Agathe has 
evidence of it. She came to me to-day to confide 
her uneasiness. She is tormented with this situ- 


172 


Two Sisters 


ation which runs the risk, if it be prolonged, of 
compromising her, and which moreover she does 
not understand. As she said to me very plainly, 
there is certainly some misunderstanding. She 
is a widow and ready to accept Captain Bris- 
sonnet and she does not wish that he on his part 
should assume an attitude which could make her 
enemies believe that she is only a coquette, and 
she complains of his taking before her this atti- 
tude. He knows that she is free. He has only 
to open his eyes to discover, as all society unfor- 
tunately has discovered, that he does not dis- 
please her. His attentions are inexplicable if 
he isn’t interested in her and yet he doesn’t de- 
clare himself. He may, indeed, have motives for 
holding back : an acquaintanceship with another 
which he hesitates to break or the modesty from 
the realization of his moderate fortune. . . . 

How do I know? Agathe was at first astonished 
&t it. Now she is worried over it and she has 
reason to be. She has found it necessary to put 
an end to these dangerous criticisms by warning 
him who is the cause, and without the least 
doubt the unconscious cause. Monsieur Bris- 
sonnet ought not to be made responsible for 
slanders which he has no suspicion of. He must 
be made acquainted with them so that knowing 


Two Sisters 


173 


them he may choose to come to a decision. It is 
Agathe’s idea and I think it quite sensible. She 
hesitated to introduce herself a subject of this 
nature, and she is wise. She considered that 
since I introduced Monsieur Brissonnet to her 
I was the intermediator planned both by this 
little fact and by my position as sister. So she 
has asked me to see the officer and inform him 
of the unfriendly comments that are circulating. 
It puts him in a place to declare himself. . . 

I accepted this mission, painful as it is, and 
wrote to Monsieur Brissonnet asking him to 
come here to-morrow at two o’clock. The letter 
has not gone yet, for I did not wish to despatch 
it before we had talked it over together.” 

“Why?” Li^baut asked. He had caught in his 
wife’s tones the vibration of some undercurrent 
of emotion, suppressed and subdued by a will 
which was inflexible. Her studied effort to ex- 
pose the detail of her actions without gloss with 
the requisite emphasis on each word was proof 
of this. “Yes, why?” he insisted. “I have al- 
ways left you free to act in all circumstances as 
you like. I know you too well not to be sure 
that you would never permit yourself anything 
which I should blame.” 

“You are very indulgent, I know 1 ,” Madeleine 


174 


Two Sisters 


made reply. She said again, with eyes the hid- 
den distress of which gave him pain, “Very 
kind. . . . It is also a permission which I 

wish to obtain from you as well as advice. I 
wanted to ask you if you will be here to-morrow 
at two o’clock when Monsieur Brissonnet comes. 

. . . I would like you to receive him with 

me. ... It seems to me that your presence will 
increase the seriousness of this interview and 
will make it more of a family matter which 
would justify it. . . . Finally . . .” (and 
into her voice came a trembling more accusing 
still) “were I all alone I should feel too timid. 
I should not find my words easily. With you 
here beside me to take up my thought when nec- 
essary and to support me I shall have the 
strength. ... Do not refuse to be here when 
he calls, mon ami! It is the greatest service that 
you could render to my sister and consequently 
to me. . . .” 

In the simplicity with which this woman, tried 
so terribly in spite of herself, invoked the assist- 
ance of her husband on this occasion, there was 
something so delicate and so loyal that he stood 
a minute without replying, touched to the quick 
by her words. The self-same, who a short time 
before had listened to the cruel and branding 


Two Sisters 


175 


insinuations of his sister-in-law, he who had 
responded to the idea of concealing himself 
there behind the door of this little sitting-room 
to listen to to-morrow’s interview, now expe- 
rienced one of those shocks of conscience which 
cannot bring peace except through a perfect 
openness and surrender. Abruptly he went to 
her side and seized her hands: 

“Listen, Madeleine. . . . Before answer- 

ing you I must make a confession. I cannot 
permit you to speak to me in this manner and 
myself silent. I ought not. . . . Since you 

began to tell me of this conversation which you 
had to-day with your sister the truth burns my 
lips. ... I also had a conversation with 
your sister to-day, just a few moments ago. I 
came from her house. Everything which you 
have told me she told me. . . . Let me go 

on,” he insisted as Madeleine made a gesture of 
astonishment. “It is necessary for you to know 
why I did not interrupt you when you first 
began. . . . This secret has stifled me too 

long and when I see you so straightforward, so 
simple and true as you have been just now, I 
cannot endure nourishing by myself ideas which 
are hidden from you. ... Do not reply to 
me yet !” he said again as she tried once more to 


176 


Two Sisters 


speak. “I have the courage now to speak to 
you; I am not sure of having it later. . . . 

Why did I not interrupt you?” he repeated. “I 
wished to know if you would tell me exactly 
what Agathe had told me. I submitted you to a 
test — ah ! and a shameful one, because. . . 

He hesitated a moment, “because jealousy has 
seized hold of me. . . . The horrible thing 
is out. . . . You see I have suffered much 
during these last weeks. This extreme atten- 
tiveness of Monsieur Brissonnet in our circle of 
which you speak I have observed also. Like you, 
I have noticed an anomaly in his conduct: he 
has been coming with a frequency that proves a 
very special interest on his part and yet he has 
take no natural step which indicated any definite 
purpose. . . . Pardon me for going to the 

bottom of my thoughts, Madeleine. ... At 
the moment when I began to wonder at the 
mystery which I observed in this man’s mode of 
life I saw you becoming a little nervous, then 
more so, finally really ill. It seemed to me that 
your condition was not explained by purely phys- 
ical disorders. I believed that I was right in 
making out a moral trouble and I was afraid 
. . . yes, I was afraid that you also had let 

yourself yield to the seduction which naturally 


Two Sisters 


177 


emanates from a hero so young, so interesting 
and unhappy. . . . You see how I became 

jealous. It isn’t your fault if your poor husband 
is a servant of the operating room and the hos- 
pital, a little worn by the hard work of it and 
deprived of the aureole of military glory which 
appeals to the imagination. . . . How often 

since I married you, seeing you so beautiful, so 
exquisite, so elegant, I have trembled not that 
one might make love to you — but lest our life 
together might not suffice you. . . . And 
then I have wondered if your charms had not 
moved the heart of our new friend and if this 
was not the explanation of his attentiveness in 
our circle and of his silence in respect to 
Agathe? I have struggled against these ideas. 
I did not see that I had the right to inflict the 
consequences of them on you. . . . This 
week they became too painful, and I have been 
incapable of controlling them. I did not have 
the strength to have an explanation with you, 
so I had it with Agathe . . . this afternoon 

... a few hours ago. . . 

“You have been talking to her as you have 
just talked to me?” cried Madeleine. “You have 
said to her what you have just said to me?” 

“Everything,” responded Lidbaut. 


178 


Two Sisters 


“Oh!” she groaned, “how could you? . . . 

You have estranged her heart from me forever! 

. . . Oh, what have you done to me? . . . 

How wrongly you have acted toward me ! . . . 
Oh! I did not deserve this! . . The phys- 

ician saw her whole body tremble while she 
uttered this cry in which was muffled a revolt. 
She was going to say more but she stopped. The 
idea of this interview which her husband had 
had with her sister completely upset her. But 
this trouble was nothing beside the terror with 
which the first of this confidence filled her. 
Through an instinct which was not cunning, she 
was weighing in Lidbaut’s declarations but this 
one point, that by which she might be able to 
express herself with perfect liberty without 
avowing her secret. She strained all her mental 
energies to hide the emotion which arose in her 
on learning that her husband had fathomed this 
feeling which she had wished to dissimulate at 
any price. Even now she would dissimulate to 
the end, make it her defense of what to him was 
mystery. This minute of effort and intense emo- 
tion had its effect, sudden and impossible to con- 
ceal. No sooner had she spoken these last words 
than she became pale as death and fell back- 
ward in a swoon into her armchair. To the 


Two Sisters 


179 


practitioner this was only another tangible proof 
of the profound nervous commotion which was 
affecting her whole organism. A cause there 
surely was, and what other could he suppose if 
not the true one? This additional evidence pro- 
duced in him also an emotion which he could not 
control while he gave Madeleine the care this 
fainting spell demanded. When she came to 
herself they remained silent a moment without 
looking at each other but understanding that 
their conversation could not end thus. They 
must express their thoughts on a subject that 
touched them both for the first time, and in what 
terms was to be seen. She was the first to break 
the silence: 

“Pardon me,” she said, “if I spoke a little 
warmly just now. You say that you have suf- 
fered, and however extravagant and mad this 
suffering has been it is your excuse. . . . 

Yes, it has been extravagant. . . Wishing 
to impress upon the very depths of her husband’s 
heart the belief in this heroic deception, she had 
the courage to envelop him and fire him deeply 
with her look. She put into it all the fidelity of 
a good woman who will never fail in wifely devo- 
tion, and knowing she will not succumb feels she 


180 


Two Sisters 


has the right and duty to keep to herself the 
secret of her temptations. 

“But it did not prevent you,” she continued, 
“from doing me an irreparable wrong with 
Agathe. ... I have often told you that she 
had respecting me an attitude which was a little 
suspicious and which has always pained me. 
She has been acting openly so far, but now she 
is going to hate me. You have estranged her 
heart from me, my poor friend, the heart of my 
only sister, and all for a mad fancy ! . . 

“Then you do not love this man?” questioned 
Lidbaut. From everything which she had just 
said to him the husband, however generous he 
was by nature, had gleaned, and retained but one 
fact: the denial of the suspicion which had 
haunted him for so many days. But the in- 
fallible intuition belonging to jealousy did not 
surrender so quickly. Frangois had appetite 
only to hear his wife repeat this denial and give 
it so many precise words that she might assist 
him in throwing a favorable light on all the 
little signs on which his sorrow had fed itself. 
&t the same time he felt that this insistence was 
brutal just now. Madeleine was visibly so ill 
that it was almost inhuman for him to prolong 
an explanation, a sad one if she told it truth- 


Two Sisters 


181 


fully, still more sad if she tried to deceive the 
perspicacity of her husband so as to spare him. 
Alas, it sufficed that the physician should have 
but an inkling of a generous deception for him 
to pass around all these scruples. 

“Say to me that you do not love him.” 

“Again,” she said, brokenly making a gesture 
as if she were oppressed beyond expression. 
“Then you haven’t given me enough pain with 
this idea of yours, interfering in a relation of 
affection that after your own is the dearest that 
I have? ... I am your wife, my friend, 
your faithful wife and I love my children. . .” 

“Ah !” he groaned, “that is no response. . .” 

“Well ” she commenced in a still more 

agitated tone. 

“Well?” 

“Well, no. . .1 do not love him. . . .” 

she said. 

“But your melancholy these last months since 
your return from Ragatz, your illness, your 
silences. . . . What is* the matter if you 

have not some sorrow that is tormenting you? 
And your swoon just now?” 

“And it is you who puts to me such questions,” 
she interrupted finding strength enough to smile, 
“you, a physician? . , . It is true that I 


182 


Two Sisters 


have not been feeling very strong for several 
weeks. My nerves often betray me. ... It 
is your place to know what is the matter with 
me and to cure me. But you prefer to make me 
still more ill. . . Her mouth was slightly 

open, and she continued to smile with a smile 
of infinite sadness. Again her tormentor under- 
went suddenly just such a terrible attack of 
remorse as the jealous experience before the 
fatal work of their frenzy. Who does not re- 
member the heart-rending cry of Othello before 
the dead Desdemona? “O ill-starr’d’ w r ench : 
Pale as thy smock! When we shall meet at 
count this look of thine w r ill hurl my soul from 
heaven and fiends will snatch at it. . . 

To be sure, the agonizing inquisition of Mad- 
eleine’s husband had little in common with the 
act of the assassin Moor; neither did the sus- 
ceptibilities of heart from which he suffered re- 
semble scarcely at all this madness of the 
Shakespearean hero who falls in epilepsy. Nev- 
ertheless, it was by the same violent reversal of 
his w T hole being that Li^baut became suddenly 
in revolt against his own passion. He suddenly 
saw the horror of the w T ords which he had al- 
lowed to get the upper hand of him. He put his 
head in his hands, covering his face as if he 


Two Sisters 


183 


could not endure the remorse, and he remained 
a minute in this way without speaking. Then 
he knelt before his wife, and covering with tears 
the hands which he was kissing he said to her : 

“What shall- 1 do to make you forget this action 
of mine of going to your sister as I did and the 
outrage of talking to her as I talked? . . . 

You are right, I have been mad. I shall be so no 
longer. ... It seized me like a fever, like 
giddiness. ... I have not been master of 
myself. . . . But I know that you are tell- 
ing me the truth. I believe you. . . . Oh! 

how shall I prove to you that I believe you?” 

“First of all by rising,” Madeleine responded 
tenderly. And when Lidbaut had stood up she 
continued, “and by promising me to answer any 
question with perfect frankness. . . . It is 

not a matter of my doubting your faith in me. 
... I, too, believe that you have faith in me. 
I know it. . . . But we are not alone in the 

world. . . . Will you answer me? . . 

And at his sign of assent she went on in a tone 
in which all her hidden feelings vibrated: “I 
have written my letter to Monsieur Brissonnet 
asking him here to-morrow. I haven’t sent 
it because I wished to know first if you approved 
of my sister’s plan. . . Things have 


184 


Two Sisters 


changed so much now that I know of your call 
upon her and the sorrow that you have made for 
yourself. ... Do you not think it would be 
better if this letter were not sent? ... If 
your interview with Agathe had taken place yes- 
terday she certainly would not have come to me 
to-day to make this request. What good will my 
intervention do? If Monsieur Brissonnet loves 
my sister and hesitates to marry her because he 
has scruples knowing her to be very rich, he 
will certainly declare himself sooner or later and 
gossip will cease. This is evidently disagreeable 
to her, but after all one shouldn’t exaggerate its 
importance. This weariness is nothing com- 
pared with the pain that we should feel if, fol- 
lowing a conversation w T ith me from which he 
would understand that it was necessary for him 
to decide, the officer w r ould retire into the back- 
ground altogether. Agathe w^ould not forgive 
me after her jealousy has been awakened. She 
would accuse me of having played a two-sided 
game. . . . It is evident you should be there 

to testify that I requested you myself to help me 
with this interview. Having been present, you 
could tell her the details. . . . Neither 

would she believe you but would fancy that I 
were working you over to my side. . . . She 


Two Sisters 


185 


is so distrustful ! . . . When you saw me so 

upset just now to the point of swooning it was 
because I know this trait of her character. I 
foresaw at a glance in what difficulties all of 
us were to be enveloped. . . . The best 

thing, do you know, is not to mix ourselves in 
this marriage in the future.” 

“No, Madeleine,” replied her husband with a 
singular firmness, “on the contrary, you ought 
to have your part in it and an active part. It is 
the best proof you could give to your sister that 
my fancies have been insane and that I was mis- 
taken. You see that I said to her , for I myself 
have no need of proofs. ... If you fail in 
this negotiation and if Monsieur Brissonnet does 
not decide to ask for Agathe’s hand, he would 
have to disappear from our midst which he could 
not do setting up for the polite man that he is 
except by arranging it so that there will be no 
gossip. He would use the surest means of avoid- 
ing gossip and would leave Paris. It is so easy 
for him to enter again into service! . . 

Fortunately Ltebaut did not see his wife’s hands 
tremble over the needlework she had just taken 
up so as to appear more composed. He con- 
tinued : “Before this departure it would be very 
hard if Agathe accused you of having played the 


186 


Two Sisters 


double part of which you speak, since your 
intervention brought for a result this definite 
departure. ... If you renounce this role 
of ambassador, on the contrary, you ought to 
justify this change, and whatever pretext you 
give to her Agathe is sure to distrust. This call 
which I was bound to pay her is too recent. She 
will guess that we have come to an understand- 
ing. . . . She will think that you have given in 
before my jealousy. . . . And what I wish 

that she should know well is that this jealousy 
no longer exists. Besides, she will know 
that ” 

“You have the intention of speaking to her 
again? . . Madeleine asked quickly and 

with a true pang. “It is true you can scarcely 
do otherwise, for now she will seek you out her- 
self, without doubt. . . . My God ! As long 

as she does not throw you again into that multi- 
tude of chimeras from which I have just seen 
you suffer so much. . . . No, you will not 

fall again, you are right, for if we have this 
interview to-morrow with Monsieur Brissonnet 
we will get from it at least the advantage that 
your mad jealousy no longer has any cause. 
Either he will become Agathe’s fiancd or he will 


Two Sisters 


187 


go away. . . . Let us have it then and as 

soon as possible. . . .” 

There was a silence between them. Madeleine 
saw that the shadow which she dissipated at 
such a great price was re-appearing in her hus- 
band’s eyes. jealousy based on sentiment such 
as this man experienced of this wife goes around 
and returns again in ways almost impossible to 
foresee. It shows in the most despotic exactions 
and in the most passionately generous of sacri- 
fices. In the shame of having consented, al- 
though only for an instant to his sister-in-law’s 
plan of acting the spy, Francois Lidbaut felt the 
need of proving to his wife by some tangible sign 
his entire return of confidence. He who an hour 
before had repulsed the idea of putting himself 
in hiding so as to hear the conversation between 
Brissonnet and Madeleine and to learn the true 
sentiments of the latter, felt nothing but horror 
now at the idea of being third person at their in- 
terview. However keen she was, she was mistaken 
about this peculiarity of this most illogical of 
passions. She was put out of countenance, there- 
fore while she asked if her husband was going 
to spread another trap for her. Was not his 
insistence that she fulfill the promise made to 
Madame Mdris another proof? She condemned 


188 


Two Sisters 


this admirable man in whom duplicity had never 
entered. But she was moved to tears by his 
response in which she found so much delicacy 
mingled with kindness. 

“We shall have no interview with Monsieur 
Brissonnet,” he said, repeating the same words 
his wife had used, and emphasizing the pronoun. 
“I shall not be there. I do not wish to be there. 
It is you alone who will see the officer. . . . 

If you pardon me, this is the token I demand. 

. . . If not, I shall think that you harbor 

ill-will against me, which would be but just. 

. . . I could not help from suffering from 

ideas which possessed me, for I did not create 
them. They seized me and in spite of myself. 

. . . But I did not have the right to verify 

them by this underhanded method. When your 
sister finds out that you have seen this man 
alone after my expressed desire, she will under- 
stand what a change has taken place in my mind 
and that I will explain why. . . . But it is 

not my place to reassure you. You can see that 
for yourself. . . . And meanwhile, where is 

your letter to Monsieur Brissonnet?” 

“On my desk,” Madeleine replied. There came 
to her lips a last request that he should wait a 
little while, but she did not utter it. She felt 


Two Sisters 


189 


that her husband would find the calm in the 
storm in which he was tossed if she voluntarily 
withdrew her legitimate rights of management 
of her own affairs. And besides this, she felt her- 
self at the end of the rope, so to speak, her force 
about gone. Nevertheless, >she felt she must 
accomplish what she considered to be her strict 
duty — the concealment from him at any price 
of the agitation which the prospect of this con- 
versation with the man she loved caused in her. 
It was about time, too, to have a little solitude 
before the actual scene w T hich must inevitably 
take place, after which she could hope for some 
peace of conscience and of nerves which her soul 
and body called for. She saw Lidbaut looking 
for the unsealed note, saw him seal it without 
looking at the contents, put a stamp on it, ring, 
and hand it over to the servant. 

“Have this taken to the main post-office at the 
Place Victor Hugo,” he said, “so that it may 
arrive punctually to-morrow morning.” 

When the door w^as closed he returned to his 
wife’s side, knelt dowm before her and looked at 
her w r ith a countenance from wfirich radiated an 
exalted tenderness. 

“It is the first time for many months that I 
shall sleep without this weight on my heart. 


190 


Two Sisters 


Why did I not speak to you sooner? . . . 

Now I shall take care of you. . . . You will 

no longer have pale cheeks but will get well and 
strong. I shall seek and I shall find the means. 
Nothing is impossible to me from the moment 
that I know that you have not ceased to care 
for me.” 


f 


CHAPTER EIGHT. 


THE HEROIC LIE. 

That evening Frangois Liebaut decided that 
he must have another conversation with Agathe 
to correct her false impressions on the “whole 
affair,” as he thought it to himself. He owed 
it to himself and he owed it to Madeleine. 

“Words or silence though she give me,” he 
said shaking his head to drive away the fear that 
was becoming insufferable, “I shall not be more 
thankful of one than of the other. . . . My 

duty is absolute. I owe it to my wife to repair 
this wrong which I have done her and I shall 
repair it to-morrow morning. My first visit on 
leaving the hospital will be to go to Agathe’s.” 

But the next morning, on emerging from the 
hospital, the address which Dr. Lidbaut gave to 
the driver was not that of Madame de Mdris. 
The little clock hanging before him in the coupd 
turned around to twelve, and he had not yet 
made that visit which he had promised so sol- 
emnly to himself to make. Divided between the 
191 


192 


Two Sisters 


terror of finding himself face to face with his 
sister-in-law and remorse at not accomplishing 
what he considered to be a strict obligation, he 
did the less courageous alternative. He wrote 
to her. Returning home for lunch, he had the 
driver wait while he hurriedly penned the fol- 
lowing note, which was duly handed to the con - 
cidrge of the great apartment house on the cor- 
ner of the avenue des Champs-Elysdes. 

“My dear Agathe — I have had an explana- 
tion with M. I want to say at once that I have 
absolute proof that we have both been deceived. 
It is necessary for you to efface from your mind 
all ideas which may have come from my foolish 
imaginings. I hope, besides, that you will have 
good news this afternoon, and if you come at 
three o’clock you will probably get the response 
that you desire. If such is the case, no one will 
be made happier than Madeleine and your de- 
voted brother-in-law, Francois Liebaut.” 

The note had a something of implorative about 
it and the signature which was written in a 
tremble attested the crisis of weakness in which 
the whole was written. They did not contain 
one phrase the very letters of which for a woman 
of Agathe’s frame of mind were not so many 
proofs that she had seen aright and that her 


Two Sisters 


193 


?ival had used once more her art of playing the 
comedy. 

“He did not dare to come to tell me this to my 
face !” she said to herself after reading this mes- 
sage. She rumpled the paper in her hand with 
a kind of savage disappointment which was com- 
forted only by crying out, “Coward! coward!” 
She had spent the night wondering if her 
brother-in-law would have the courage to keep 
his promise or if at the last moment he would 
back out? Scruples which would accompany 
this weakness and which he would take for the 
reproaches of his conscience — would they not 
prevail on this matter of listening to this con- 
versation between Madeleine and Brissonnet? 
“But he is jealous,” she answered. herself in refu- 
tation of the objections which her deep acquaint- 
ance w T ith the physician’s timid nature suggested 
to her. “He is jealous and a jealous man cannot 
resist the pressing need to know. . . . Pro- 

vided only that he is not so foolish as to have 
an explanation with Madeleine beforehand. . . 
But no. It would be necessary to own that he 
had come here and spoken to me. ... A 
husband, even the most blind, does not make 
these confessions. . . .” And then what hap- 

pened but that the note arrived in which she 


194 


Two Sisters 


read that this very thing — this confession which 
Li^baut had made to his wife had taken place. 
A scene of this nature between the husband and 
wife presumed on the part of the one who had 
provoked it — and who, of course, was no other 
than Frangois — an extraordinary state of exalta- 
tion, which Madame de M6ris had seen plainly 
enough that he possessed. Away from her, it 
was very certain he could not control his tongue. 
He had told everything to Madeleine without 
regard — everything. If such was the case did 
Madeleine know the proposal which the elder 
sister had made to her husband? This idea was 
sufficient for Agathe to experience a passionate 
feeling of hatred against her accomplice of those 
few moments of the evening previous. She did 
not have the occasion to show this hatred other- 
wise than by this insult repeated with fury: 
•‘Coward? Coward !” ... A thought which 
touched a deeper chord than her own self-love 
burned her now with its significance. . . . 

“Madeleine loves Brissonnet. It is a certain 
thing which I can no longer doubt and which 
explains everything. This will be the means for 
her to deceive her husband. The unhappy man 
will not be there when they come together at 


Two Sisters 195 

their rendezvous. Madeleine and Louis will be 
alone. ...” 

Of course this possibility of a t6te-h-t£te be- 
tween Mme. Lidbaut and the officer was no new 
thing. But the idea of it now became suddenly 
so insupportable to the jealous woman as if this 
t6te-h-tete had really taken place for the first 
time. She could only see what to her seemed 
probable and ever indispensable facts : Madeleine 
at Ragatz taking Louis Brissonnet as her lover, 
and to make secure her intrigue, introducing her 
sister into the game to play the role of screen 
to herself — an hypothesis frightfully and gratu- 
itously iniquitous, and foolish into the bar- 
gain. What could have caused, in a happy 
mistress, this deep-seated agitation which with 
Mme. Lidbaut had so disturbed her health as to 
give a warning to her husband? . . . But 

Agathe no longer reasoned. Again she took up 
her brother-in-law’s letter and going over it took 
in all the syllables, translating them as they 
came in the sense of her anger with that irresist- 
ible ardor of suggestion which jealousy finds at 
his command. Poor woman ! She was showing 
the result of years of terrible unhappiness. 

“It is Madeleine who has dictated these 
words,” she reasoned. “I recognize her style of 


196 


Two Sisters 


expression — so insinuating, so underhanded ! . . . 
She has prevented Lidbaut from coming to see 
me. She fears my perspicacity lest I should mis- 
trust her actions. After what he himself called 
an explanation she is warned, I know, of many 
things. Did she really count on my being her 
dupe by the sole suggestion of her miserable 
Frangois? . . . Why not? If she and Bris- 

sonnet arranged three months ago to betray us 
both, Lidbaut and me, in this infamous manner, 
they ought to believe me as innocent and as 
stupid as he is. But can they be accomplices? 
. . . How can I believe that Brissonnet, a 

man of honor and a hero, could lend himself to 
such mean and shameful manoeuvres as these, 
which have consisted of paying attentions at 
the risk of making my whole life unhappy with- 
out loving me and of engaging himself to an- 
other? And who? No, it isn’t true. It isn’t 
true. He has not done this. ...” 

She dared to add quietly to herself : “He has 
not acted in this way to me.” This touched the 
deep and tender spot which was still alive. The 
whole attitude of the young man to her during 
these three months had so often given her the 
illusion that he loved her. It had been so easy 
for her heart to yield and caress this fancy. She 


Two Sisters 


197 


herself had for him so true a sentiment. The 
hypothesis that he might have been playing the 
comedy with her — and because of a passion for 
the younger — tore her to pieces. And returning 
once more to this letter which had announced 
to her the failure of her little plan to spy, she 
said: “Yet Li^baut suffered yesterday as much 
as I. He loves his wife and is jealous. Though 
he can know the truth, he doesn’t want to . . . 
Ah, if I were he ! Why not take his place since 
he has deserted?” She was herself crouched be- 
hind the door which communicated between the 
doctor’s office and Madeleine’s little reception 
room. If Madeleine was true to her, what harm 
would she, the elder, do in listening to this 
conversation. None in the least. If, on the con- 
trary, Madeleine was deceiving her, had she not 
the right to get at any price proofs of this be- 
trayal? Li^baut had said to her to come at 
three o’cjock. The interview with Brissonnet had 
then been fixed, as Madeleine had said, for two 
o’clock. Agathe caught herself looking at the 
clock. It was a little after one. Motionless she 
stood there following indefinitely the movements 
back and forth of the pendulum. The temp- 
tation grew stronger and stronger. . . . When 
there remained no more than ten of those little 


198 


Two Sisters 


notches which stand for minutes between the 
point of the large hand and the figure two the 
young woman was no longer mistress of the im- 
perious desire which devoured her. She arrayed 
herself for going out, descended the staircase, 
called a cab, all in a kind of somnambulism from 
which she did not aw T aken until she found her- 
self on the sidewalk of the rue Benouville which 
runs at an angle with the rue Spontini, the spot 
designated to the driver where she wished to 
alight. Then suddenly she realized the enormity 
of the act which she was about to commit. She 
was about to give it up when the silhouette of 
the figure seen in a passing vehicle brought her 
frenzy back to her stronger than ever. It was 
Brissonnet whom she had just recognized. She 
saw him jump out on to the pavement in front 
of the Li^baut residence and consult his watch 
with the gesture of one who believes himself 
late. . . . Once the door was closed after 

him the resolution was again made. The 
plan sketched out in her thoughts was very 
simple. She would ask to go up to her brother- 
in-law’s office under the pretext of getting a 
book requesting that her sister be not disturbed. 
When she had once pressed the button the sound 
of the bell re-echoed through her whole being. 


Two Sisters 


199 


But already the door was opened before her and 
she heard herself recite her little lie. Then she 
went straight up to the office without the valet’s 
thinking of following her. What idea would this 
man have on seeing that she did not return? 
Ah, what did it matter provided that she heard 
what she wanted to hear! . . . Now she is 

in the waiting room, now in the consulting 
room. . . . She goes toward the door be- 

hind which her sister and Brissonnet are talk- 
ing freely, believing themselves alone. . . . 

Every noise is muffled in this room so arranged 
as to insure the most complete secrecy to the 
confidences of the doctor’s patients. . . . One 
drapery was fixed in a manner to move outside 
the folding door; a second drapery of tapestry 
fell around the other side, so that any sound of 
voices could not possibly reach the little recep- 
tion room from the office or from th,e reception 
room to the office. Agathe had counted on just 
this. Her fingers part the first drapery. She 
takes hold of the metal handle of the latch, 
presses on the bolt slowly, softly. She draws 
toward her the door which moves on its hinges 
with a faint creak. Now she touches the heavy 
stuff which lines the other portiere. . . . She 
listens. . . . It is Brissonnet who is speaking. 


200 


Two Sisters 


“Then if I understand you perfectly, Ma- 
dame,” the officer was saying, “my attentions 
to Madame de Mdris may have been remarked 
upon?” 

“They have been already,” the voice of Mad- 
eleine made answer with a firmness at wffiich 
Agathe was astonished. But what amazed her 
still more was this evidence that her sister had 
spoken the truth. She was carrying on precisely 
that discourse which she had said she w'ould. 
He was going then to be made to declare his true 
sentiments and the idea of it made the heart of 
the jealous woman beat violently. If this man 
hesitated it would be because he did not love 
her. He went on in a voice that seemed muffled 
and in which there w r as that of a constantly in- 
creasing emotion: 

“You see me full of regret, Madame, for any 
consequences of conduct which I was far from 
suspecting. . . . Tell me at leaist that it 

was not you who believed me capable of con- 
sciously compromising a woman? ... I have 
never courted Mme. de Mdris, I give you my 
word of honor. She herself will testify to this. 
But since you consider that I have been im- 
prudent, beginning from to-day I shall conduct 
myself in such a manner that the most malevo- 


Two Sisters 


201 


lent will be obliged to change their talk. . . 

“What do you mean ?” Madeleine asked. 
“When a person who is as much before the pub- 
lic as you are has frequented too often the draw- 
ing room of a woman he compromises her still 
more by ceasing so abruptly his calls. Take care 
of what you decide to do. You can make up 
your mind the world is not so blind. It knows 
very well that sudden ruptures of relations con- 
ceal almost always a mystery. ... If your 
attentions have been remarked upon your ab- 
sence will be remarked upon no less. . . . 

They will find the reason in a disagreement. . . . 
Over what? . . . My sister is not one of those 
whose conduct could be condemned. There 
would remain but one hypothesis, and the most 
natural . . . ” As she concluded her tone 

became less firm. “For in a word an honest 
man, and I know how far you are that, can not 
have had two motives in interesting himself in 
a young woman since he is free and she is 
free ...” 

“I believe I understand you, Madame,” re- 
sponded Brissonnet after a silence. “In fact 
you ought to have believed this of me. I should 
have believed it myself of another. Mme. de 
Mdris is a widow and is charming. Every man 


202 


Two Sisters 


would be proud to be treated with marked atten- 
tion by her and to bestow upon her his name. 
It would have been most natural if this ambi- 
tion had been mine. . . . ” Then in a voice 

scarcely distinguishable he continued: “It has 
not been mine. . . . Now that you speak 

my eyes are opened. The truth of my situation 
appears to me. . . . My attentions to Mme. 

de M6ris seem to suggest sentiments which I 
have not had for her. I profess the deepest re- 
spect for her, but I do not love her and I have 
never thought that she might do me the honor 
of conferring her hand upon me. You affirm to 
me that in these conditions the part I w^as pre- 
pared to take which was to suspend almost en- 
tirely my visits on her would risk making things 
worse. I could not prove my entire, my abso- 
lute good faith, Madame, more clearly than by 
asking you to tell me yourself what you deem I 
ought to do so that I may do it. . . . I prize 

too much your esteem. . . . and that of 

Mme. de Mdris. There is nothing I would not 
do to keep the one and the other. . . .” 

“I am not qualified to give you advice, Mon- 
sieur,” replied Madeleine. “But those with 
greater authority than I have anticipated me. 
. . . You must recall that the other day you 


Two Sisters 


203 


were telling my sister and me of a conversation 
which you had with General de Jardes? This 
distinguished general drew out before you the 
plan of your future. You hesitated, did you not 
say, before following his advice? Nevertheless 
you recognized the wisdom of it . . . ” 

“If I understand you aright, Madame, you 
mean that I should enter service again and 
go far away from Paris for a long period of 
time? . . . ?” 

“It is the surest way of preventing further 
gossip,” responded Mme. Lidbaut. Her voice 
had altered a little, but her increasing emotion 
did not prevent her from insisting. “Even in a 
difficulty that concerns what is most dear to me 
— the reputation of my sister — I should have 
scruples about mentioning this solution if the 
authority of M. de Jardes was not to me a 
guarantee that it is absolutely conformable with 
your interests ...” 

“I thank you for your solicitude,” Brissonnet 
said, interrupting her. The irritability of men 
who are born for action and who control them- 
selves badly was in this quick response and, 
above all, the grievous irony of ignored passion. 
“Yes, Madame,” he went on, “I thank you, and 
you will be obeyed. On leaving your house I 


204 


Two Sisters 


shall go to M. de Jardes. . . . My request 

for the Tonkin commission will be signed this 
evening. . . . From here then I shall return 
to the province to see my relatives. I have to 
say goodbye to them before a new exile which 
will end — God knows when. ... I shall be 
seen no more in the circle of Mme. de M6ris, 
and the cause of my absence will be of such a 
professional order that comments will be spared. 
. . . You are right. When a man of honor 

has been imprudent, even unknowingly, he 
ought to redeem himself. . . . And yet no,” 

he continued more severely, “it is not altogether 
right. There is too great a disproportion be- 
tween wrongs of attitude only which I may have 
had and the sacrifice which I am going to make. 
Ah, Madame,” and his voice became piercing, 
“at least let me before I go away tell you some- 
thing more. . . . Permit me to tell you a 

story . . . the adventure of a friend of mine 
.... a soldier like myself. . . . He had met 
an accomplished woman — one of those ideal 
creatures that one dreams of having near one — 
the child for its mother, the brother for his 
sister, the youth for his fiancee, the man for his 
wife. . . . This woman was not free. ... In 
spite of his entire past spent among companions 


Two Sisters 


205 


who had few morals, my friend was not one of 
those who look forward with a sort of entertain- 
ment in upsetting the peace of a household. . . . 
If he too felt for this woman a passionate sym- 
pathy he swore to himself not only never to tell 
her of it but not to show it to her . . . and 

he kept his word for days, weeks, months. . . . 
The woman he loved had a sister who resembled 
her at certain moments so as to be taken for the 
other. This mad fellow whose unhappy plight 
I am telling you kept his word very well, but 
precisely because he felt himself strong enough 
to hold it until the end he let himself go and 
come in the circle of the one he loved. I have 
told you that he was madly in love, but I assure 
you he was also a man who knew how to love. 

. . His happiness consisted in breathing 

the same air that she breathed, in meeting her, 
and in hearing her voice, in conversing with her 
and in discovering at every new occasion one 
more pretext for justifying in his own eyes the 
worship which he had vowed to her. . . . 

He would have been completely happy in this 
love without hope if he could have come to her 
home every day to dwell in her presence without 
speaking to her, to look at her, to listen to her, 
speak to her, watching the play of her thoughts 


206 


Two Sisters 


and feelings. . . . But these daily visits 

were forbidden him. Others were permitted 
him, at least he believed they were permitted 
him, on this sister whose resemblance to the one 
he loved was so striking. . . . My friend 

allowed himself to be tempted without reflection 
to deceive by this resemblance, this passion, 
which was devouring him. He formed the habit 
of going to the theatre, to evening parties, every- 
where where he was sure of meeting this sister 
whose face contained the same charm as the one 
with whom he had fallen in love. . . . And 

then the hour came when even this simple joy 
was forbidden him. . . . Then it was in- 

supportable to him that his motives for conceal- 
ment should be misunderstood by the only per- 
son whose opinion he prized. . . . For the 

first and last time he failed in his word sworn 
to himself. So that he may not go away, Ma- 
dame, without having the consolation that you 
have pardoned him and that you have under- 
stood.” 

“I have understood, M. Brissonnet,” the voice 
of Madeleine made answer all of a tremble. And 
what pain this evidence of her emotion gave 
Agathe. . . . “I have understood that you 
have been speaking to me as no one has ever 


Two Sister 8 


207 


spoken to me, as no one will ever speak to me. 
You have not remembered that I am married 
and am a mother. You have respected in me 
neither my husband nor my children. You have 
poisoned for always the memory of relations 
which I had believed to be simple, honest and 
upright. And so they were. . . . Adieu, 

Monsieur, I ask of you to leave here without 
adding a single word. . . . You would not 

like to have me obliged to call. . . .” 

“Madame,” cried the young man suppli- 
catingly. Then, bursting into sobs: “It is you 
who make such a reply to me, you ! you ! . . . 

Ah! unhappy man that I am. Why did I not 

keep silence till the end? Why did I not carry 
away with me a secret which I had hidden so 
well? I entreat you, Madame, not to say, not 
to think that I have not respected you. Above 
all do not fear me. ... Do not do me this 
wrong. . . . Permit me to explain to you ...” 

“I permit you nothing,” interrupted Ma- 
deleine, “I leave you. You understand that you 
have nothing more to do except to retire and to 
return here no more.” 

While saying these words she walked across 
to the door which separated her rooms from the 
office of her husband with such a rapid step that 


208 


Two Sisters 


Agathe, paralyzed by the terror of being dis- 
covered, had literally no time to withdraw. On 
raising the portiere Madeleine perceived her 
sister, and the shock she received was so violent 
that her limbs sank from under her. She had to 
lean against the wall while still continuing to 
hold on with her right hand to the drapery. 
Agathe stood with her head bowed. She had 
taken a step to stop her sister. Now she dared 
go no further. Brissonnet, after exclaiming 
with astonishment, looked alternately at the two 
sisters. All sorts of sentiments passed over his 
expressive masculine face. Finally indignation 
prevailed, and addressing Agathe he said: 

“Oh, Madame de M6ris, how could you? . . 

“Monsieur Brisonnet . . . entreated the 

young widow. 

“You need not justify yourself. I do not wish 
you to justify yourself ...” Madeleine 
cried brokenly, summoning strength to stand 
up between her sister and the officer. “It is I, 
M. Brissonnet,” she continued, turning toward 
Brissonnet, “who wished that my sister should be 
present in concealment at our interview. . . . 
It is I. . . . I wished her to hear from your 

own mouth the details of your true intentions 
on the only point which you should have men- 


Two Sisters 


209 


tioned. . . . It is neither her fault nor my 

own that you have touched another . . . ” 

“Have I understood you, Madame?” said Bris- 
sonnet. “No, it is not possible that you could 
lend yourself to such a betrayal ...” 

“I requested you a moment ago to leave us, 
Monsieur Brissonnet,” repeated the courageous 
woman. “Now I command you to ... I 
am in my own home and I can dispense with 
your intrusion in qualifying an action for which 
my conscience is the sole judge ...” 

“Madeleine,” Agathe implored on her side, 
her face bowed. Her sister seized her hand to 
stop her with a violence that broke off her sen- 
tence. It sufficed for the officer who had grown 
frightfully pale under the outrage to seize his 
hat and going toward the door that he should 
retire at once bowing deeply to the two women. 

. . . Several minutes later the noise of the 

door below opening and then shutting testified 
to the fact that he had obeyed the insulting in- 
junction. Agathe looked up slowly, but Mad- 
eleine’s back was toward her. She could see 
nothing so plainly as her sister’s right hand, 
which straining touched with the tips of the 
fingers the velvet arm of a chair. Suddenly she 
saw Madeleine’s whole form begin to quiver, to 


210 


Two Sisters 


shake from head to foot in terrible passionate 
sobs. 

“He has gone . . . ” she cried, “I shall 

never see him again ... I wished it so 
. . . never . . . never . . . ” 

“It is true then that you love him also?” spoke 
Agathe. 

There was no response. 

“And you pleaded my cause with that ardor. 
. . . You wished to give him to me? . . . 

You saved my honor before him? . . . How 

shall I obtain from you my pardon?” groaned 
Agathe. 

“By helping me to live, and to conceal every- 
thing from Psfam<5053,” Madeleine replied. 


CHAPTER NINE. 


CONCLUSIVE REMARKS. 

An hour later when Dr. Li^baut returned to 
the rue Spontini and stepped into the little re- 
ception room he found the sisters sitting side 
by side. Madeleine was leaning her head against 
the elder’s shoulder while the latter was softly 
caressing her forehead and her hair with a ten- 
derness that gave the last proof to the jealous 
husband that he had been a prey to foolish 
fancies. 

“Well?” he asked quickly. 

Mme. de M6ris gave him a look of admonition 
to push no further his interrogations. Her face 
showed a deep self-reproach and remorse, and he 
knew at once that her thoughts and feelings had 
centered on her sister. “Madeleine did not suc- 
ceed ...” she said brokenly. “It appears 
that I was deceived and that M. Brissonnet does 
not love me. He was very frank. He has recog- 
nized his imprudence and has been excused. He 
211 


212 


Two Sisters 


enters the service* of the* colonies again and will 
leave France. ... I shall have the courage 
to brave it out,” she added, embracing the 
younger with passion, “because I have found 
again my sister ...” 

“It is I who have found mine,” replied Mad- 
eleine in so low a voice that Liebaut did not 
hear what she was saying. Besides, had he 
heard them — those words so simple, he would 
not have understood their meaning nor compre- 
hended the miracle of love which the younger 
sister had just performed in the elder one’s 
heart. The two women had in fact lost the man 
both of them loved. But thanks to the volun- 
tary sacrifice and delicacy of the deep-souled 
Madeleine, this common regret was going to re- 
unite them instead of separating them. Both 
spoke the truth. The one and the other had 
really found once more a sister — an affecting 
revival of an intimacy which however did not 
appease the critics in the world. As has been 
said, this world is not blind but has its good 
reasons for not assuming heroism and delicacy 
of feeling except as a last resort and when it can 
no longer find some shabby explanation, and 
in consequence the probable one to mysteries it 
can not penetrate. The sudden departure of 


Two Sisters 


213 


Commander Brissonnet was of course duly dis- 
cussed in all the small social circles which 
evolved around the two sisters and the following 
two versions were inclined to prevail. The first 
is that of Mme. Ethorel, who rehearsed this con- 
fidence under the oath of secrecy to twenty in- 
timate friends: 

“Just fancy the stupid blunder I made. . . . 
It is I who went to tell Mme. Lidbaut that Bris- 
sonnet was compromising Mme. de Mdris. Both 
sisters loved the same man. . . . Oh, I do 

not believe that anything ever took place ! Any- 
way I had no hand in it, you understand. . . . 
What is certain, though, is that they had to have 
a terrible explanation. He left Paris forty- 
eight hours after I served that tattle to Mad- 
eleine. Where were my wits? . . . They have 
both been made ill over it. They never leave 
each other for a moment so as to avoid gossip. 

. . . This artifice of theirs is a little too ap- 
parent . . . ” 

The other legend is one which Favelles started 
while he winked his far-sighted eye in his most 
wicked manner. 

“The young people of to-day have really no 
backbone. ... I introduced this Brisson- 
net to two sisters, charming women. He made 


214 


Two Sisters 


love to both of them, concealing each affair from 
the other. They discovered the rose-pot, and 
now you see* my fine fellow running off to Ton- 
kin as if he had committed a crime. In my time, 
gentlemen, when one had two women on the 
string and they woke up to the fact, one could 
keep both of them even if they were two sisters. 
They would be commanded to remain good 
friends and they would obey. ... I would 
wager twenty-five louis that this simpleton 
hasn’t been on really good terms with either 
one ...” 

How bitter these conclusive words about his 
romance would sound to Louis Brissonnet if 
they ever reached him. But would he ever sus- 
pect their real meaning and return from that 
distant country where he had gone into exile so 
that he might be far away from the woman in 
whom he had devined a soul worthy of his own 
— a tender and passionate soul in whom love 
and pride were master passions. The memory 
of that terrible scene which had separated him 
from Madeleine did not permit him for a long 
time to believe in the reality of her beauty. He 
was forced to come to the conclusion (how could 
he help it?) that the two sisters were playing 
with his innocence with the purpose of drawing 


Two Sisters 


215 


him into the conjugal trap. Yet one night under 
the sky of the far Orient when the image of the 
woman who had chosen to offer herself as 
a sacrifice flashed before him, an instinct was 
awakened in him stronger than all evidence. He 
divined a mystery, and since he was not of the 
world, he caught a glimpse of the Truth. It 
seemed to him that he was hearing her say, “It 
was thus that I cared for you, there being no 
other way.” Is it necessary for him to follow 
her and know her pure and sacrificial spirit more 
completely at some future time? Yes, now that 
he has resumed again his ambition as a devoted 
soldier with all the ardor of disappointed senti- 
ment. 

All martyrdom has a right to compensation. 
That of Madeleine would be repaid if Brissofcr 
net ever accomplished again for the service of 
France spirited deeds inspired by her sacrifice 
and by the idea which would come to him that 
the joy which his strength would give her was 
the sole pleasure and compensation she chose to 
have. 


The End. 



A CONFESSION 



















/ 





A CONFESSION 


i. 

The Abbe Cheminat had been sitting in his 
confessional for two long hours, and was begin- 
ning to feel very weary from having listened to 
the long recital of sins and petty misdemeanors, 
often imaginary, which burden the consciences 
of young and old penitents in a provincial parish. 
The worthy priest was known far and wide for 
his deep and fatherly indulgence and for his 
patience in listening to the interminable de- 
tails which fret the scrupulous. He was ad- 
mired for his lofty virtues also, and those who 
sought his advice in the confessional became each 
year more numerous and more demanding, while 
he alas ! was no longer young. He was fifty-five 
years old now and had never been very robust. 
His life of hardships in a too severe climate had 
prematurely aged him. Now this late February 
evening he was shivering with the cold in the 
back part of the little church of the Minimes 
which all the inhabitants of Clermont-Ferraud 
are so well acquainted with. There in the corner 
of that long and lonesome Place de Jaude it lifts 
219 


220 


A Confession 


up its gray facade from which spot one can see 
over opposite during most of the year the top of 
Puy-de-Dome white with snow. 

At last the priest was alone. Five minutes 
more and he would go up to the apartment which 
served him as a vicarage. There he would warm 
himself in front of the fireplace in his library 
and would take up again the great work he was 
doing on the history of the clergy of Auvergne to 
which he dreamed of consecrating his old age 
once he had retired into some peaceful canonry 
which his Grace the Archbishop would allot to 
him. But, however desirous he might be of re- 
turning to his armchair and his papers, he could 
not do so until five o’clock had sounded when his 
professional hours were over. He remained at 
his post like a soldier on duty listening with de- 
light to the tomb-like silence which filled the 
sanctuary scarcely broken by the movement of a 
chair. This silence was the proof that no one 
else was coming to ask for his ministrations and 
that he was free to depart. Therefore, in spite 
of his habitual control over himself, he could 
not repress an amused expression when, with 
that acuteness of hearing which belongs to a 
priest who is acquainted with every noise of his 
church just as a housewife is of those of her 


A Confession 


221 


house, he heard the door open and quick steps 
come towards him, then stop near the confes- 
sional. Someone knelt, then knocked softly on 
the grating, behind which a movable board 
formed a partition. 

With a nervousness of gesture at once timid 
and sudden as also from the rustling of the 
garments which accompanied the movements, 
Abbd Cheminat perceived that it was a woman. 
He was thinking that he would have to hear 
again a story of unsaintly failings, little pre- 
varications, fits of temper, little gluttonies, as 
were told him by the hundred, wthich compelled 
him to relieve the imaginations of so many in- 
nocent and of such mediocre lives. He said to 
himself that this last penitent might quite as 
well have waited until tomorrow. Then directly 
he reproached himself for the uncharitable con- 
traiety, and he made a little prayer as he opened 
the sliding window. 

In spite of the gloom which overspread every- 
thing he recognized from the outline of the 
woman kneeling near him that she was young, 
and from her voice — that great informer to all 
confessors — he learned that she was a victim to 
a most painful agitation. From that moment 
the slight vexation which Monsieur Cheminat 


222 


A Confession 


felt gave way to thoughts purely professional. 
There are true priests as there are true physi- 
cians. Both of them when they come before a 
person sick in body or in soul instinctively abolish 
everything in themselves wilich has nothing to 
do with their duty. The old priest of the Min- 
imes had listened in his life to thousands of 
penitents. Today even he had heard half a score. 
When he bowed his gray head so as not to lose a 
word, the newcomer could see behind the grat- 
ing a form as deeply and piously attentive as if 
she had been first one to come to confession be- 
fore him. The ascetic look of his face, lined with 
noble wrinkles lighted up by two black eyes of a 
frank severity ( if one can unite these two ideas ) 
gave to the young woman a great throbbing of 
the heart — whether of hope or fear, who can say? 
Her breath came quick and fast as she recited 
the prayer: “I confess before God ...” 

II. 

“My father,” she commenced in a voice almost 
convulsive, after the priest had put to her several 
questions to which she barely responded, “my 
father, I have come to you in the most terrible 
hour of my life. . . . I am on the verge of 

committing a crime, a crime which I shall not 


A Confession 


223 


survive. ... Do not ask me what crime. I 
shall not tell you. But I shall commit it, I must 
commit it,” she added, using emphasis on the 
words “I must.” “My father, in spite of this I 
am not a bad woman. You understand. I still 
have faith. I come to implore you to accord to 
me beforehand the forgiveness for this which I 
am about to do, so that I shall not die damned. 

. . . I know. My conduct appears absurd 

since I know it to be a crime, since I avow it to 
you. You are going to say ‘Do not do it.’ . . . 
If I could tell you all, my father, you would cal- 
culate my misery, you would lament it, you 
would know also that it is inevitable. . . . 

Ah!” she groaned aloud while leaning her fore- 
head against the grating as if incapable of sup- 
porting the burden of sorrow which weighed 
upon her. A sob heaved her whole body while 
she repeated again in despair “Ah !” adding “My 
God, have pity on me !” . . . 

Although the abbd always exercised his duties 
as priest in the midst of a people whose misde- 
meanors were of the usual order, he had received 
now and then singular confidences. The human 
soul, stirred in its depths, sounds the same omin- 
ous notes of folly and of unhappiness, however 
depressing may be the poverty of the circum- 


224 


A Confession 


stances. And then the priest resembles the phy- 
sician in this point also : he is not astonished at 
any situation the anomaly of which for anyone 
else would be monstrous. Nevertheless the aged 
confessor stood aghast before the moral aberra- 
tion which the words and bearing of the young 
woman revealed. How could this unfortunate 
creature, Whose hurried breathing bespoke such 
agony have so much piety united with so much 
madness, how could she believe in God’s pardon, 
seek after him and implore of him, and in the 
same breath mention a crime she was about to 
commit and of a suicide? For it was that which 
she had meant in her confession : she was going 
to commit a crime and kill herself afterwards! 
What crime was it? The first idea which came 
to the priest was that he had to do with a drama 
of jealousy. The young woman had probably 
been betrayed. By her husband? By her lover? 
It made little difference which it was. She had 
been betrayed and she was preparing to be re- 
venged. In the most critical moments of passion 
the one and only remedy is to gain time. The 
priest knew this. He commenced to respond 
with great impressiveness: 

“My daughter, what you are asking for is im- 
possible to grant. You know quite well that the 


A Confession 


225 


very thought of wrong is already a wrong when 
the thought is consented to. You know also, 
since you are a Christian, that God’s pity is in- 
finite; it requires our repentance in order to 
descend upon us. . . . The idea that you have 
come to be judged is a sign of grace, a wonderful 
sign. Do not let it slip away. You should re- 
pent of having premediated an action which you 
yourself call criminal. Give thanks to the Father 
that you premediated it only. Renounce it with 
your heart and all your soul and say with me: 
‘Lead us not into temptation. . . .’ ” 

The stranger shook her head with a movement 
of revolt, and in a tone in which vibrated an in- 
domitable will she responded: 

“No, my father. It is useless. . . . My 

mind is made up. I shall do what I have 
resolved upon and I shall die afterwards, 
if I die damned,” and she repeated, “damned, 
damned . . .” 

“Return to me to-morrow,” said the priest, 
whom this increasing exaltation was frightening 
more and more. “I shall consult my superiors,” 
continued he discreetly, “and perhaps . . .” 

“And if I am not able to return? . . .” she 

interrupted, “if by to-morrow I have already 
done the deed? ... I dragged myself as far 


226 


A Confession 


as here this evening by a last effort, in order not 
to do this horrible thing without having asked 
pardon for it beforehand. No,” she said, sinking 
down upon the floor, “I am lost. God pushes me 
away like everybody else. . . . Where shall 

I go for help? How I suffer! Oh, how I 
suffer ! . . .” 

The Abbd Cheminate remained some moments 
silent. He looked at the strange penitent trying 
to discern through the grating some sign of what 
he now suspected. He ended his observations 
by distinguishing the features of a face which 
was altered and not alone by emotion. He recog- 
nized the staring and contracted look which preg- 
nancy inflicts upon women. The cloak which 
enveloped the unhappy creature had opened dur- 
ing the abandonment of her last gestures, and 
the deformation of her waist was apparent. The 
youth of the woman, the decent poverty of her 
dress, the thickness of her veil, the hour selected 
by her to slip into the church, all revealed that 
the true cause of her despair was not jealousy, 
as the confessor had at first believed, but shame 
of the girl-mother on the eve of her confinement 
which made her premeditate infanticide. On 
making this discovery, the priest was seized with 
a frightful agony. The responsibility of the 


A Confession 


227 


priestly office was aroused in him. He had the 
intuition, or rather he had had the evidence that 
if he attempted to learn more than she gave him 
about her history, the violent arousal of her 
shame would precipitate the poor creature, ill 
more in soul than in body, to some immediate 
outrage. At the same time the idea of the bold 
and heretical decision which he had to come to 
made him tremble all over. This simple and 
noble priest was a man of deep faith, one of 
those believers to whose lips there mounts spon- 
taneously in great trials the supreme prayer: 
“Into thy hands, O God, I commend my spirit.” 
He lifted up his soul unto God with all the ardor 
of which he was capable, so as to obtain a bene- 
ficial word for this distracted soul, the word 
which would prevent the crime which in her 
despair she had resolved upon. It seemed as if 
a power from on high had really conducted to 
him the young woman. In the high light of this 
brief meditation he commenced to thoroughly 
understand that the love of life and hope had 
not been uprooted from her heart. Yes, the 
child-wife loved life still, since she had not de- 
stroyed herself at the first symptoms of preg- 
nancy, and she already loved the unborn infant 
since she had not already resorted to abortion. 


228 


A Confession 


The priest prayed anew with a fervor which his 
scrupulousness redoubled and in a voice moved 
with pity and yet severe, he said : 

“I am going to ask God, my daughter, to par- 
don beforehand that which you are about to do. 

. . . But I make one irrevocable condi tion.” 

“What, my father?” 

“That before killing it you will suckle it.” As 
though he were afraid of his own words he 
murmured rather than recited the formula of 
absolution : “In the name . . .” 

III. 

The woman remained there incapable of mov- 
ing, so thoroughly was she astounded at the per- 
spicacity of the priest. She heard him when he 
left the confessional box, and she trembled with 
terror at the idea that he might stop to wait for 
her and speak to her. But no, his steps went on 
and died away in the direction of the vestry- 
room. She said to herself that he would re- 
appear in a few minutes, after removing his 
surplice. The thought of making the sign of the 
cross even in the shadow of the pillars to this 
man who knew her secret gave her the strength 
to get up. She thought that she was going to be 
delivered there on the flagstones of this cold 


A Confession 


229 


church which she had entered every evening for 
a month — her last month — and without daring 
to do that which this evening she had summoned 
the courage for — “Before killing it . . the 

confessor had said to her, and the poor unborn 
thing had stirred in the womb of the despairing 
woman, as if it also had understood the fatal 
words. Those movements, those contractions, 
how many times Juliette — for that was her name 
— had listened to the sharp appeal which echoed 
in the most vital depths of her being. Never as 
now and never with such emotion. She had the 
energy to reach the door by leaning against the 
wall and, once in the square, to hail a passing 
carriage which was empty — one of those which 
are set high on the wheels with adjustable win- 
dows, which serve as hackneys in the middle of 
France. She got in. The rude jolting on the 
rough stone pavement gave her such physical 
suffering that she cried out. She did not become 
comfortable, if such a term applies to such 
misery, until she was once on her bed in the 
sordid chamber of the cheap hotel where she had 
taken refuge five weeks before when it had be- 
come impossible to conceal any longer her con- 
dition. A fire which she started immediately 
lighted up in its first flash the faded wall-paper, 


230 


A Confession 


the mahogany furniture upholstered in a faded 
rep once red, and the carpet of a kind of pieced 
felt which scarcely covered the floor. This scene 
of distress and poverty was yet after all a 
shelter! Shivering, Juliette wound herself up 
between the patched cotton sheets and under the 
scanty coverlets on which she had thrown her 
clothes to increase the thickness. Outside she 
could hear people walking. Someone was call- 
ing out, and then followed laughter. It was the 
hour for table d’hote dinner. Some man mis- 
taken about the door tried even to penetrate into 
her room and drew back with an oath when he 
recognized the number. The poor girl, fearing 
that the bolt was not sufficiently strong, got up 
to push her trunk against it. She was over- 
whelmed with the weight of her burden and 
scarcely had the strength for the effort. She got 
into bed half frozen, and again nature was so 
violent that she said to herself: “The time is 
come. . . .” And she waited. The pain 

passed and the weakness from the jolt having 
completely broken down her moral buoyancy, she 
commenced to weep, to weep indefinitely, silently. 

Fever seized her. Her ideas came and went in 
her brain, where the veins throbbed to bursting. 
One by one the episodes of the commonplace ad- 


A Confession 


231 


venture which had led her to this sinister hour 
were imagined in her excited memory. As a 
drowning man sees again his whole life pictured 
before him, so did she remember her own. She 
saw herself first as she emerged from infancy: 
it was in Paris, on the second floor of a dismal 
house in the rue de Saint- Jacques near to the 
Louis-le-Grand school, where her father had fifth 
professorship. There were four children of them 
to be supported on the scanty salary from the 
university. What a pity ! For a girl to cut any 
figure at all as she merges into young ladyhood 
is impossible when she has less than a farmer’s 
daughter, or some healthy robust peasant who 
has received no education, and understands 
neither the piano, history or the languages, and 
has never had any dreams — impossible, danger- 
ous dreams. Then again there arose before J uli- 
ette those sad misfortunes, the death of her 
mother and, as if one stroke was not enough, her 
younger sister, her second brother, and finally 
her father. . . . Where to turn? A little 

more of domestic life and then she departed to 
make her fortune with a diploma as a school 
mistress. Under the protection of one of her 
father’s colleagues she was received as a gov- 
erness into a rich family. . . . How did she 


232 


A Confession 


let herself be seduced by the young Baron de 
Querne, one of the intimate visitors of the house? 
Did she know? In truth, there seemed to float 
about her in this atmosphere of luxury and in- 
dolence the germs of a fatal temptation. That 
involuntary and irresistible uprising of bad feel- 
ings took place on the occasion of several visits 
to the school-room of two young ladies her own 
age who came to see her little pupil. To breathe 
the perfume of their violets, to imagine their 
free and pleasurable life of fancy and poetry 
and love depraved her heart. She made one leap 
towards the impossible. She imagined herself 
a fine lady sought for at all the balls, for she had 
a certain vivacious beauty and turn of mind. 
And when one evening, in the salon, where she 
was permitted every night, M. de Querne occu- 
pied his time with her, where could she find the 
strength to put a stop frankly to his attentions 
as she should have done? It flattered her to be 
loved like one of those much envied ladies by a 
young man whose success in life she knew. Yes, 
she had believed that she was loved. She had 
believed in this man who, however, had never 
spoken to her of marriage. And one day from 
weakness to weakness, and rendezvous to rendez- 
vous he became her lover. Two months of in- 


A Confession 


233 


toxication, of mad joy — for her alone. If he had 
loved her even for an hour would he have had 
the cruelty to abandon her so suddenly, as out- 
rageous an act as it was inexplicable? “I do not 
love you any more; it is no fault of mine . . 
Ah, what a sentence to come from the mouth of 
the man to whom she had given (she groaned 
with pain at the thought) those ardent kisses! 

The images grew clearer, and they also became 
wilder. Juliette saw herself at the time when 
everything presented itself in terrible perspec- 
tive — she was pregnant. In her dismay at the 
discovery she had never for a moment thought of 
going to her seducer, too proud to undergo the 
suspicions of the man who had not believed that 
he was her first lover. He had said this to her. 
What would he see, therefore, in this avowal? 
An attempt at extortion. Days followed, other 
days, all the same to her in her anguish. As 
much as she was able she dissimulated before the 
parents of her pupils. When she understood 
that her waist betrayed her she went away to 
the village of Clermont under the pretext that 
her brother was ill, who was an under-professor 
in the school there. On arriving at the station 
she had not the courage to go to his house. She 
had herself taken to an out-of-the-way hotel 


234 


A Confession 


which she chose bj chance. She registered under 
a false name. And there for six weeks she had 
waited, hypnotized by the idea of this crime for 
which she wanted to ask pardon beforehand of 
the priest. If her destiny decided that she be 
delivered before the time and that the infant was 
not to survive, she herself could live. Her honor 
would be saved. She could begin again her life 
after this one mistake. If the infant was born 
at term and lived, ah well! she and the child 
would both die. Why, if it was a girl, should 
she expose it to a lot like her own, perhaps a 
worse one? If it was a boy, why to a lot like her 
father’s and her brother’s, whose miseries of 
overworked middle-class life she knew. No. For 
the unfortunate who have no money, and who 
are neither day labourers nor peasants, it is bet- 
ter never to have been born or to die as soon 
as . . . 

In the midst of the eddying of her thoughts 
the pain commenced again, sharper, more dart- 
ing, so cruel that Juliette in order not to cry, 
bit her pillow while her poor body writhed. She 
had entered the supreme period of her labour. 
How much time the agony lasted which she had 
the energy to endure without the groans crossing 
the threshold she could not have told. All she 


A Confession 


235 


knew was that the room alone must keep her 
secret. At one moment her suffering became so 
intense that she believed she was going to die, 
and then everything became confused in her 
head — and the child was born. 

It was morning — an Auvergne morning, cold 
and gray, when a dismal daylight filtered slowly 
through the curtains. Juliette had her child 
there, very near to her. Her senses had returned 
to her after the final torture. She felt that the 
infant lived and she had not as yet extended her 
hands to touch it. The horrible project haunted 
her thoughts anew. The best thing she could do 
was to seize it suddenly, to close its mouth with 
her hand and to smother it. One gesture sufficed 
— and what a simple gesture! 

She did not even have the energy for it. A 
fatigue that was beyond all measure overcame 
her, as if, with all the blood lost in that frightful 
solitary labor, her will itself had deserted her. 
Suddenly in the silence of the house and of the 
street, which were scarcely awake, a small cry 
made itself heard, penetrating and feeble at the 
same time, which drew her forth from her 
lethargy to which she had given herself up. She 
said to herself: “It is necessary to act.” She 
took the infant with trembling hands. Her 


236 


A Confession 


fingers wandered over the fragile body, all moist 
and warm with maternal warmth. She wanted 
to see it. In the light of breaking day she 
looked. ... It was a girl. The innocent 
and unformed creature stretched its little limbs, 
puckered its little eyelids, held out its little lips. 
. . . Suddenly Juliette seemed to hear the 

voice of the priest, “Before killing it you shall 
suckle it . . .” And with docility, almost like 
a slave, she undid her chemise, uncovered her 
thin neck, and placed against her breast that in- 
stinctive mouth which, hesitating at first, began 
to suckle with avidity. The mother helped the 
suction, which was difficult at first, by pressing 
her breast with her free hand. And in the 
measure which the drops of her milk passed into 
this flesh which was the issue of her flesh, tears 
mounted to her eyes, sweet salutary tears which 
drowned her despair, and she commenced to 
murmur amidst her sobs : “My child, my child,” 
and instead of smothering the puny and miser- 
able creature, she rocked it lovingly . . . The 
priest had done well in pardoning her. Thereby 
she was saved from a double crime. 










* 

V 

• . ' ■ 





















. 














\ 



































' 






' ' 
















\ 














1 






























'f 














V 







































































i . L • * 









s’ 





























• 











































































































t 
















• . 









































I ' ' 

* > l. 


N * ' 



' 

* 

























































f 







* 































































s' 

• . 








oooaeeas^ai 


© 



